
Class JlAliil 

Book-^JaA 

Copyright)^!' 



COKfRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Ireland's Woes and 
Britain's Wiles 

by 

ANDREW GERRIE 




1922 

THE STRATFORD PUBLISHING CO. 

Boston, Massachusetts 




u^^ 



^ 



Or 



Copyright, 1981 

The STRATFORD CO., Publisher* 

Boston, Mass. 



The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 



JUL 10 1922 

©CI.A()74 8 71 



Contents 



Chapter 



Page 



I 


Sinn Fein 


1 


II 


English Perfidy .... 


10 


III 


Agitators 


19 


IV 


The Man in the Red Hat . 


28 


V 


Hate . 


41 


VI 


Humor ...... 


49 


VII 


The Child and the Moon . 


60 


VIII 


Propaganda 


72 


IX 


Admissions and Contradictions 


83 


X 


Sinn Fein and the Senate . 


95 


XI 


John Bull and Uncle Sam 


105 


XII 


Jealousies 


121 


XIII 


National Characteristics 


137 


XIV 


Militarism 


165 


XV 


A Presidential Election . 


184 


XVI 


Is There a Cure for the World's Unrest 


199 



Foreword 

THE following sketches were written in the first 
instance, with very little thought that they would 
ever see light from the printed page. 

Some of them are the substance of memoranda and 
diary jottings set down from time to time. Others are 
the gist of letters written during the storm and stress 
of the World War, and in the chaotic period subsequent 
to the Armistice and the Treaty of Peace. These 
letters were written indeed, for the most part, to my 
medical friend out west, who bears the significant 
patronymic of 'Dowd.' I tell him that his ancestors, 
five or six generations ago, dropped the prefix *0' 
from their name. This he stoutly and indignantly 
denies, but his protestations fail to be altogether con- 
vincing, for he is possessed of that grace and charm of 
character which the Irishman almost invariably ac- 
quires when at length he has been carried into the on- 
flowing stream of Civilization. 

These effusions in the midst of disturbing and for- 
bidding National and World conditions, constitute in 
some measure, an effort to preserve a balance and a 
sanity of mind, not only in the writer, but in those upon 
whom they were inflicted as well. 

To steer a straight and steady course and keep an 
even keel in the storm of German frightfulness and 
barbarity, when one's own flesh and blood was being 
choked with poison gas and torn to tatters by cruel 



FOREWORD 

shrapnel, called not only for a firm hand but also for a 
cheerful and jocund heart. 

To 'carry on' in these post-bellum days, when the 
whole atmosphere is rank with the fetid exhalations 
of hate and prejudice, — of unreasoning spite and 
malicious misrepresentation of fact, requires an equal 
courage and a like buoyancy of spirit ; for it would in- 
deed seem that the sullen bitterness and suspicious dis- 
trust of peace is more alarming and disconcerting than 
the violent antagonisms of war. 

To wish to help in lifting a little of the depressing 
load, is an ambition not altogether unworthy, and 
gives some excuse for even the most modest endeavor. 

We passed through a Presidential campaign in the 
summer of 1920, perhaps altogether unprecedented in 
the sordid selfishness and baseness of its appeal. It 
ought to be the purpose aud determination of all good 
citizens, that no such election will ever be possible 
again in this our beloved land. Hate and prejudice, 
ignorance and suspicion, malignant and racial animosi- 
ties were capitalized to a degree that hardly could 
have been thought possible three hundred years after 
the Pilgrims signed their historic compact in the cabin 
of the Mayflower. 

It has been our custom to brush aside with a wave 
of the hand and a toss of the head, nauseating charges 
and countercharges as so much election bluff, — as the 
necessary ammunition of the political spell-binder, but 
which mean nothing and are soon forgotten when all is 
over. But is this statement true ? Is it not rather true 
that while men easily forget in a literal way, it takes 



FOREWORD 

more than a wave of the hand or a flippant jest to 
brush away the spirit of ill-will and spite that has been 
branded upon the hearts and souls of men? Does this 
come to an end when the campaign is over? We may 
think it a harmless pastime to pour vials of vitriolic 
spite upon some nation or race across the sea. We may 
even imagine it to be something of an advantage to 
have the vitriol spued upon the further shore of the 
Atlantic rather than upon this ; but the heart that 
hates, that has been taught to hate, — that has been 
encouraged and countenanced in its hate, stays with us 
to become a plague-spot in our social and governmental 
life. 

If we are beginnning to reap the result of this 
thing — • and we are, — we have ourselves, through our 
politicians, chiefly to blame. If serious minded investi- 
gators tell us that our country is rapidly becoming the 
most lawless among the nations, — that crimes of 
violence are on the increase, and in proportion to popu- 
lation, are more frequent than in any other civilized 
land, — if the city of Chicago has more than one hun- 
dred homicides in one year, while London a city of 
more than twice the population of Chicago, has only 
fourteen murders in the same twelve months, it is surely 
time to put smug complacency and conceit aside and set 
ourselves assiduously to search for a cause and a cure. 

One wonders sometimes if it is this same inordinate 
conceit that starts some of us out to prate about win- 
ning the war. Of course we won the war; but so did 
little Belgium and gallant and unconquerable France. 
And so did Australia from the far away antipodes win 



FOREWORD 

the war. It would do us all good to sit down and con- 
template the fact that Australia with her six or seven 
million of population, laid upon the altar of civiliza- 
tion as large a sacrifice of her young manhood as we 
did out of our hundred millions of people. It is surely 
almost time we had ceased to pray the prayer of the 
Pharisee who said : — 

"Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as other men 
are." 

The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind ex- 
ceedingly small, and what is more, — and more easily 
forgotten as well, — in the last long run, they do not 
go far a-field to get their grist. When a Greek or an 
Italian King is assassinated by one of his people, or a 
mis-guided Irish youth fires a pistol at Queen Victoria, 
we hold up our hands in holy horror and talk about the 
fruits of monarchial systems of government; and yet 
what civilized country, in modern times, has a record 
equal to our own in the killing of its rulers? 

The bitterness and unwarranted abuse of party 
politicians, together with the gutter press of our yellow 
journalists has sent out madmen to shoot three of our 
Presidents ; and yet not one of these assassinations, nor 
the total of all of them combined, has exceeded in brutal 
cruelty and pathos, the martyrdom of Woodrow 
Wilson. 

To try to place a finger lightly and gently here and 
there (and at the same time, without malice prepense,) 
upon some of the processes and considerations that 
underl}^ these things, is the purpose for which these 
pages are written. 



CHAPTER I 

Sink Fein 

WHEN Irish Paddy determined to pool 
issues with German Fritzie, he sailed 
away on an unknown and uncharted 
sea. To hobnob and forgather with the Super- 
man was a new role for the man from the Emerald 
Isle to assume. No wonder men asked them- 
selves, how will Patrick bear himself when he 
wipes his chin and proceeds to sit in counsel with 
the Kultur of ^'Deutschland Uber Alles." Will 
Cork or Coblentz dominate the situation? Will 
Potsdam or will Limerick impose its dictum upon 
the amalgamation? Will Fritz assimilate Pat and 
turn him into a helmeted warrior with a fierce 
mustache pointing sky-ward, or will Pat instead 
of doing the goosestep, train Fritz in the proper 
handling and use of the shillalah, alike in times 
of peace as in times of war? The experiment 
could not fail to be an interesting one and the 
outcome of the proposed compact problematical in 
the extreme. 

Whether the exigencies of the situation de- 
manded it or not, it may be impossible to ascer- 
tain with any degree of certainty, but it is true 
that when our old friend had himself inoculated 

[il 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

with the vaccine of German Kultur and refine- 
ment, he took to himself a new name. He called 
himself Sinn Fein. Whatever may have been the 
terms and secrets of the alliance however, it very 
soon became evident that Pat was to remain Pat 
in all the essentials that go to make up a man 
of free and independent judgment and mind, for 
the interesting old chap is more interesting than 
ever before. 

'*A rose by any other name would smell as 
sweet, ' ' and the odor of Limburger is not impaired 
by a change in the nomenclature. 

Just at this period in human affairs however, 
the thing we have in mind seems a little more 
pungent when we call it Prussianism. Neverthe- 
less it is much the same entity wherever you find 
it or by whatever name you designate it. You 
may deck it out in any one of half a dozen fine 
phrases. It is the theory that might makes right, 

— that the end justifies the means. It is the con- 
viction that my place in the Sun is occupied by 
some other fellow and I must club him out of the 
way. It is the belief that true freedom is never 
found in equality, but only wiien the other man 
is on his back and I am on top. It is the dogma 
which declares that if there is a dollar in my 
neighbor's wallet there is one less in my pouch, 
and it is my business to see that it is transferred 
where it belongs. The Prussian hacks his way 
through while Sinn Fein whacks his way through, 

— that is the chief distinction. The gait is much 

[21 



SINN FEIN 

the same whether you find it on Courtmacksherry 
Bay or on the Spree. 

Of all created things, the human is the most 
interesting and by far the most surpassingly 
queer; and among that elect portion of the fauna 
that creeps about upon the earth, — in pugnacity 
and perturbility, — in periodicity and physiog- 
nomy, the Prussian and Pat have all the rest of us 
their nearest competitors, skinned a mile in sup- 
plying the truest type of the missing link. 

Hibernian spell-binders are accustomed to ex- 
patiate upon the 750 years of England's oppres- 
sion and tyranny in Ireland, and the picture is 
not a cheering one. John Bull would do well to 
take note of the charges that are thrown upon his 
door step. But we also would do well to remem- 
ber that 750 years form but a brief span in the 
tale of Ireland's woes. At the earliest dawn of 
history, Ireland was the abode of anarchy and 
strife, faction fights and tribal wars. The Donny- 
brook Fair is a national institution whose begin- 
nings are lost in the mists of antiquity. They do 
indeed claim that King John brought it over from 
London. He probably only tried to improve it, 
but what Englishman could do that! It seems 
clear that the troubles of Ireland began when the 
second Irishman was born. 

Well do I remember my first timorous excursion 
from home when I went to attend school in a big 
city. I had hardly made sure of my bearings, 
when my peace of mind was upset by an 

[3] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

unhallowed commotion in the street back of the 
house where I was staying. To my rustic and un- 
accustomed ear it seemed that a massacre of the 
innocents was in progress. I feared that a can- 
nibal feast was in preparation, and I made ready 
to hasten to the rescue of some bleeding and 
mutilated fellow-being. My new-found friends in 
the boarding house however laid a restraining 
hand on my shoulder, and I discovered that it was 
only a little bit of Ireland transplanted to this 
side of the sea. Had I meddled, it would have 
been a faithful and true epitome of the Irish prob- 
lem set down in the streets of a young city in the 
New World. I soon learned to sit on the balcony 
with my fellow boarders to enjoy the show, and 
to applaud as heartily as they when Bridget ad- 
monished Barney: — 

''You may bate me if you like, but no whalp of 
a son you ever raised, will ever lay hands on me 
again. ' * 

Seven hundred and fifty years carry us back 
to the time of Henry II., who was the great- 
grandson of William the Norman who conquered 
England. Henry ventured into Ireland about one 
hundred years after his great-grandfather invaded 
England. It was an age of invasion and conquest; 
and the Irish were not averse to doing a little 
invading on their own part, as the experience of 
Wales and Scotland and the Isle of Man can tes- 
tify. The man from Erin was neither better nor 
worse than his contemporaries in this respect. 

[4] 



SINN FEIN 

That he did not continue his depredations and 
aggressions nor hold his conquests, was not 
because he had reformed or had come to respect 
the rights of his neighbors any better than they 
did his, but partly because they proved stronger 
than he, and chiefly because he found cracking 
skulls at home a sufficiently lively and engaging 
occupation, without going abroad to seek for the 
sport. 

So it happened that Henry Plantaganet invaded 
Ireland at the request and invitation of one of 
the warring factions that had experienced the 
worst of it in a recent scrap. Then too, the Pope 
of the day had given him a commission to look 
into the matter and see if he could do anything 
to help in bringing peace to the troubled land. 
It was a great mistake. Henry and Strongbow 
should have remained upon the balcony as spec- 
tators of the show, but they didn't. Armed with 
the Papal Bull and the pressing invitation of 
Dermod MacMurrough, — not a very savory char- 
acter by the wa;;^, — the Norman-Saxon king 
crossed the Irish Sea, and as Harry Lauder would 
say: — ''Then the fun began." But it didn't 
begin then. It only became more varied and pic- 
turesque. Had England kept out of Ireland, the 
process of extermination might have gone on to 
its culmination, and Ireland and the world would 
have had peace; for the O'Connors of Connaught 
and the 'Brians of Munster, and the O'Neills of 
Ulster, seemed bent on making away with one 

[5] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

another. This solution would have been effective, 
but it would have been deplorable and I shudder 
even now to contemplate it, for it would have 
robbed me of some of the best and warmest 
hearted friends I have ever known. Then too, the 
the world after all would have been a somber 
enough place if the music of the harp and the stac- 
cato of the shillalah had been silenced in the land. 
England to be sure, has not been altogether a 
saint in her relations with Ireland, but we might 
as well recognize the fact that England has done 
more for Ireland than Ireland has done for her- 
self or ever would do in a thousand years. To 
mention one or two things that might be noted, — 
the British Government which of course includes 
Ireland, has given Ireland what is probably the 
best Land Act existing anywhere in the world 
today. There has also been provided one of the 
best old age pension systems, and it is financed 
by English money. Then too, undoubtedly Eng- 
land would have granted Home Rule long ago, if 
the Irish could have agreed among themselves as 
to the thing they would be pleased to accept. 
One has only to read of the bitter contentions into 
which the two great exponents of the Irish cause, 
— Grattan and Flood-fell, or to catch an echo of 
the passage at arms that such champions as Daniel 
O 'Connell and Grattan now and again indulged in, 
to understand how much Ireland's woes, and how 
much the failure to realize her dreams, have been 

[6] 



SINN FEIN 

due to the racial characteristic of steering into 
the inevitable fight. 

There is no conception of peace or freedom in 
the thought of a Sinn Fein Irishman any more 
than in that of a Prussian, in equality of position 
or privilege. It is here that the settlement of the 
Irish Problem comes to grief every time, — not 
in the opposition, stubborness or tyranny of the 
Parliament at Westminster in the last analysis, 
but in the failure of the Irish to agree among 
themselves, and that apparently, from the strange 
twist in disposition which sees no way of coming 
to terms, but by the utter extinction of one faction 
by the other. 

My own experience and observation however, 
has led me to feel that if a brood of agitators and 
demagogues, bitten by the rabies of a senseless 
hate and having neither love nor loyalty for any 
land or thing save their own gain or glory together 
with a mania for gratifying their enmity and 
their envy, had only left Ireland alone, long ere 
now she would have been a peaceful and happy 
land, and would have occupied a position of leader- 
ship in some measure like to that of Scotland in 
the counsels of the Empire. 

To be sure Ireland did not find herself in a 
position to make available the advantages that 
attended the Reformation. It is not for me to 
argue or affirm the causes of this failure; but it 
is an incontrovertible historical fact, that those 
peoples and nations that were most profoundly 

[7] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

touched by the Befonnation movement, leaped 
forward in all lines of learning, in scientific inves- 
tigation and industrial activity. Naturally when 
she found herself lagging behind, Ireland became 
dissatisfied and ultimately suspicious and bitter 
towards those who were outstripping her. This 
is altogether natural. Step by step, individuals 
and communities under such conditions, if they 
are not careful, easily become envious of their 
more fortunate neighbors and will come to per- 
suade themselves that they are not getting fair 
play, and that these same neighbors are in some 
way guilty of blocking their way to success. 

One cannot but feel deeply sympathetic towards 
the dear old land, when the volcano that has been 
more or less active for twice 750 years breaks out 
in eruption, and he does not wonder that men 
of old said feelingly: — 

''The old sod is the trembling sod." 

It would seem that with one quarter of the pop- 
ulation, and that the most progressive and ad- 
vanced portion, bitterly opposed to, and ready to 
fight to the death any scheme that would separate 
them from that equal partnership in the Empire 
which they feel to be, not only their privilege, but 
to their incomparable advantage, — all the other 
factions would go slow, at least, until they are 
quite sure they can agree among themselves as 
to what they want. 

And most of all, it would seem as if the policy 
of, — ''Hands off!" would dominate the agitators 

[8] 



SINN FEIN 

on both sides of the sea, who know little or nothing 
of* the situation, and who do not care to know 
anything beyond how to coddle and keep alive 
an ancient grudge that has become mouldy and 
rancid through the passing of the years. 

It is astonishing my son, how much sweetness 
some folks can extract from a well-masticated 
mouthful of calico. 



[9] 



CHAPTER II 

English Pebfidy 

NOT long ago a legal luminary of Sinn Fein 
proclivities was declaring in New York, 
that there can be no freedom in this old 
world till the monarchy of England has been put 
out of business. Some such sentiment was the 
burden of his oratory. Indeed a Sinn Fein pro- 
tagonist would hardly be true to type if he failed 
to expound in fiery rhetoric, this proposition so 
evidently bound up with the well-being of the 
human race. He and the Prussian are twin 
brothers in their conception of freedom and of 
the causes that would hinder or that would help 
in the accomplishment of its attainment. The one 
would sweep into oblivion every Belgian who 
would presume to get in the way of his goose- 
stepping to his place in the sun, and so to that 
wide freedom that is his right; the other would 
club into submission every native of the Emerald 
Isle who gets in the way of his struggle after the 
democratic ideal, and iDoth together they would 
annihilate John Bull for daring to prevent. 

One wonders however, if after all there may 
not be some truth in the contention, for surely 
pesky old England has long practised the un- 

[10] 



ENGLISH PERFIDY 

pleasant habit of butting in to hinder persons and 
peoples from securing freedom to take away the 
freedom of other folk. With a strange and strik- 
ing regularity, at intervals of a century or so, this 
arch-conspirator against human freedom has had 
to meddle in matters beyond her own domain. 

Taking a glance backward over the years, we 
discover that our liistories tell us that four cen- 
turies ago, the ablest monarch in Europe was 
Philip the Second of Spain. This ruler had an 
exceedingly Kaiser-Sinn-Fein-like disposition, 
and wanted his place in the sun, as who does not ? 
He knew that he was the All-highest, — the 
anointed of God, and destined to rule the earth. 
He earnestly desired freedom to accomplish this, 
his mission. Therefore with the benediction of 
the Pope, he set out upon his humanitarian enter- 
prise. The growth of democracy in his day, was 
a menace to the well-being of humanity. 

Not only was Philip the ablest, but he was the 
most powerful prince in Europe. He was the 
super-man of four centuries ago. He had the 
greatest army and the most efficient equipment. 
It mattered not that he was cruel and tyrannical. 
Those were cruel and tyrannical times. With the 
aid of the Inquisition as his agent, he planned to 
make his word the only law to which men should 
give heed. The last vestige of any pestilential 
free institution, was to be extirpated in the 
interest of that broader freedom which he sought. 

Old England had the bad taste and the bad 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

grace to object and get in the way. The navy of 
England, that instrument of Anglo-Saxon 
tyranny, even at that early date got on the job, 
and the Invincible Armada was overwhelmed in 
calamitous grief. Philip was denied the freedom 
he set out to secure, and England was to blame ; 
but Philip had probably no more ardent sympa- 
thizers than those to be found in the Emerald 
Isle. It must be admitted however that England 
in spite of her disrespect for Philip and his am- 
bitions, had saved the world and democracy; but 
for so doing she could never be forgiven, especially 
so in Ireland. 

Moving forward one hundred years, we find 
another able man, the strongest and most powerful 
ruler in Europe, in the person of Louis XIV, of 
France. He also was a faithful prototype of the 
Hohenzollern. He also had the biggest, best 
drilled, best equipped army in Europe. He too 
was the All-highest and he was accustomed to 
speak of himself as 'The State.' The Divine Be- 
ing and he were in league and the end to be ulti- 
mately attained, was the submission of all peoples 
and races to his beneficent rule. He sought free- 
dom to attain this laudable end. Here again 
meddlesome England had to put in her oar. Her 
navy was again at hand to interfere with the free- 
dom of the seas, and she sent her contemptible 
little army to measure swords, in presumptuous 
arrogance, with the finest troops in Europe, and 
with their king who because he had the might, 

[12] 



ENGLISH PERFIDY 

unquestionably had the right to subdue Europe 
and in that way, bring to her freedom and peace. 
In some unaccountable manner, England again 
blocked the way, and of course, exasperated all 
true lovers of freedom. Perhaps it may be true 
that the spirit of the meddler had a little extra 
pep infused into it on this occasion, for it was 
but a short while previous to this that one of her 
own kings set out to be a pocket edition of Philip 
and Louis, so they chopped off his head ; and when 
his son, still more foolish and stubborn, refused 
to learn the lesson, they chased him out, and nat- 
urally he went to Ireland for sympathy and com- 
fort in his woe. Even there obstinate old England 
followed him, and finally he had to seek refuge 
in the bosom of Louis, that superlative defender 
and seeker after freedom. So it happened that 
England blocked Louis as she had blocked Philip 
and in so doing saved the world and democracy, 
but for this too, she never could be forgiven, 
especially in the Emerald Isle. 

Moving forward another century, we find 
Napoleon Bonaparte emulating Philip and Louis. 
With a genius as a soldier and a diplomat seldom 
equalled in history, he surely possessed the might 
that is right, and should have been allowed the 
freedom to dominate the race for the race 's good. 
His army in turn, was the strongest and the best 
equipped on earth, and he set himself to his 
heaven-appointed task. Once again England had 
the temerity to meddle in the affairs of other folk. 

[13] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

Her navy tampered with the freedom of the seas, 
and her diminutive skeleton of an army began to 
array itself in flesh and blood, and in the accoutre- 
ments of war. Soldiers from Ireland not a few, 
flocked to the standard of the great war-lord of 
the day ; but it was all in vain. The thin red line 
of hated Albion, presumptuously hurled back the 
legions of Bonaparte, and the ambitions and pur- 
poses of the greatest man on earth, in quest of 
freedom to exercise his own will over the wills of 
other people, were baffled and brought to naught. 
So it chanced that England had saved the world 
and democracy a third time. For doing so, she 
could never be forgiven, especially so, in Erin. 

Moving forward still another century, we dis- 
cover "William of Germany the greatest war-lord 
of them all, on the field of action. Where others 
have failed he will not fail; where others have 
yielded to circumstances, he will compel circum- 
stances to yield to him. Might is and must be 
right, and the freedom others failed to attain, he 
will conquer with his good mailed fist and shining 
sword. The armies of Philip and Louis and 
Napoleon all put together, would barely serve as 
a nucleus for the mighty host which this latest 
exponent of Divine Right, has at his command. 
The supereman must rule the earth in order that 
freedom may be enjoyed, and with God as an ally, 
must brush aside every obstacle in the way. Will 
England have the assurance to attempt to cheat 
the world once more, out of the boon of freedom so 

[14] 



ENGLISH PERFIDY 

greatly desired by those who really wish the world 
well ? The world does not wait long for an answer. 
No sooner has William stepped across the borders 
of Belgium, than England on the pretext of a 
treaty and a scrap of paper, and her assumed 
obligation thereto, pushes herself with meddle- 
some audacity, into the arena, where she has no 
business to be. Her fleet once more gets busy and 
her army begins to march. 

Sympathy with and support of William as is 
natural, at once becomes the dominant sentiment 
in the circles of Sinn Fein on both sides of the 
sea. His and their ideals are one and the same. 
One is as autocratic and domineering and intol- 
erant as the other. The weak should perish, only 
the strong should survive. The man whose skull 
can 't stand to be cracked, ought to have it cracked 
in the name of freedom and progress. So together 
they see the speedy downfall of the tyrant nation 
that has always stood in the way of the ambitions 
and aspirations of the superman. But somehow 
obstinate England weathered the storm. By all 
the rules of the game and by every principle of 
fair play and justice, it ought not to have been 
so, but so it proved to be. Once again England 
had saved the world and the democratic ideal, and 
the superman and all his satellites of every name 
and race and creed were furious, for why shouldn 't 
the monarchy of England be put out of business, 
and the most efficient and strong possess the 
freedom to rule all the rest? Of course for this 

[15] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

England could not be forgiven, and never will be 
in Ireland. 

Two significant considerations emerge from a 
glance at these four incidents in European his- 
tory. First, it was not the monarchy but the 
democracy of England that in each case, blocked 
the game of the autocrat. It was the democracy of 
England that was guilty of the crime, the type 
of which the Sinn Fein orator suggests and 
deplores. 

Second; It has been the misfortune of Ireland 
that the vociferously articulate portion of her 
population that has claimed to speak for the whole, 
has always been on the side of the autocrat. Hence 
the Sinn Fein orator, with adroit and cunning 
sophistry distorts the facts of history, and dupes 
his unthinking followers by putting forth the 
claim that the people and principles of which he 
is at once the successor and the exponent, have 
been the supporters and defenders of freedom and 
democracy; whereas, invariably, consistently and 
persistently, they have given all the sympathy 
and help in their power to the autocrat in his 
assault upon freedom and the democratic ideal. 

One wonders what will be the story when 
another century has run its course. Will another 
struggle on these same lines mark the close or the 
beginning of another hundred years! There are 
those who hold that the two ideals that locked 
horns in Europe in the late war, must somewhere, 
sometime, fight the fight out to a finish. God for- 

[i6] 



ENGLISH PERFIDY 

bid that it should be on the battlefield ; but it may- 
have to be so. Signs are not wanting that tyran- 
nical England is getting a bit weary. Most of 
all perhaps, she is weary of being maligned and 
misrepresented. Heretofore she has gone her own 
way, rather independent and indifferent as to 
praise or blame. She has tried to be just and 
fair, and has succeeded almost as well as the rest 
of us would have done. In her old age I think, she 
is becoming just a little sentimental, like other 
folks, and I imagine, shrinks a bit from taking up 
the burden and responsibility that the rest of us 
selfish people have left her to shoulder, and 
when she did shoulder it, have scolded her for 
doing so. 

When next the Prussian and Sinn Fein combin- 
ation makes an assault upon the world 's liberties, 
the weight of the blow may fall somewhere else, 
and the struggle, if struggle there be, will make 
the recent war seem like a summer holiday. I do 
not believe that the effort of autocracy can ever 
permanently succeed; but that it will make one 
more titanic attempt, is not beyond the bounds of 
probability. Indeed propaganda is already fever- 
ishly at work in that direction, especially perhaps 
in an effort to isolate and weaken England, so she 
will not be able to interfere another time. If this 
comes to pass, however, I take it the gauntlet will 
be thrown down to Anglo-Saxon-dom on this side 
the sea, and the spirits of Philip and Louis and 
Napoleon and William of Hohenzollern, ^vill look 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

down in anticipation of seeing secured for the 
world the peace and freedom for which the Sinn 
Fein orator sighs. 

Whence the outstanding autocrat of a century 
hence will emerge, it is not for me to predict. In 
the past as we have seen he has not been confined 
to any one race or nation. The great civilizations 
of the world, good and bad, have usually been 
associated with the river courses that traverse the 
surface of the planet, and the struggles for and 
against autocracy, have been characterized in 
their measure, by the same phenomenon. Moses 
the foe of autocracy in his day, the greatest states- 
man in human history and the founder of a civili- 
zation the most unique that has arisen among men, 
was floated out upon the Nile ; and this last aspi- 
rant for autocratic power, has surely made famous 
an insignificent little stream in central Europe 
called the Spree. Some other river in Europe, 
perhaps elsewhere, known or to be made known 
by the development of events, may furnish the 
autocrat of the coming day. 

When that final struggle of the superman and 
the autocrat, to secure his place in the sun and 
to give the world freedom, is on, I think I would 
like to be there. May I not wish for both you 
and me, my son, that our first re-incarnation will 
take place some twenty years before that date, so 
we may have the chance (denied us on this occa- 
sion,) to go over the top with the rest of the boys. 

[i8] 



CHAPTER III 
Agitators 

NO CAUSE nor country has ever been so 
unfortunate in its champions as Ireland. 
Conscienceless agitators seem to thrive and 
grow fat, inventing and expatiating upon wrongs 
and cruelties perpetrated upon the Emerald Isle. 
One is often led to wonder what crimes the dear 
old sod could have been guilty of, to have foisted 
upon her as defenders, such moral imbeciles, such 
marvellous exponents of antediluvian morality as 
these spell-binders prove themselves for the most 
part to be. For grotesque exaggeration and mis- 
representation ; for picturesque fluency in mistate- 
ment and distortion of facts, these men are surely 
the blue-ribbon product of all the ages. It is diffi- 
cult to understand and harder to explain the 
phenomenon; but it seems reasonably certain that 
men of the Sinn Fein type, like the Germans 
become paranoic, especially, when they catch a 
glimpse of the ' flag that braved a thousand years, 
the battle and the breeze.' Ethically and psycho- 
logically, like the Prussian, they are true morans 
and seem to think the situation demands and jus- 
tifies the unlimited use of slander and falsehood. 
Why the cause of Ireland should attract this type 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

of propaganda and propagandist, it is difficult to 
say. One is at times compelled to think that they 
are as short on mentality as on morality else why 
should they put forw^ard charges of cruelty and 
oppression on the part of England towards Ireland, 
so manifestly false, that almost invariably they 
convey their own denial. Thinking people by 
them, are compelled to feel that Britannia's course 
must be reasonably fair and just or her critics 
would not need to fabricate the vitriolic nonsense 
they pour upon her devoted head. No cause is 
ever permanently advanced in this way, and one 
does not know what to marvel at most, — the 
brazen effrontery and moral degeneracy of these 
agitators, or their crass stupidity. 

One of these freaks has recently been speaking 
to large audiences in various parts of the country, 
and stirring them to frenzy over the tyranny and 
cruelty practiced by England upon Ireland at the 
present day. His righteous anger has been spe- 
cifically directed against the exploitation of 
Ireland. England with brutal selfishness is keep- 
ing Ireland as a preserve for her own trade. Com- 
pelled to carry on all her trade with England, 
Ireland is kept in commercial bondage. She is 
unable to sell her products anywhere but in Eng- 
land, and she can supply her needs from English 
factories and no other. A terrible state of things 
to be sure, and a condition of tyranny and oppres- 
sion well calculated to stir resentment and indig- 
nation in the breast of every lover of freedom 

[20] 



AGITATORS 

the world over! Why should Ireland be called 
upon to suffer and endure in this way? Why 
should England gobble up with avaricious and 
gluttonous greed everything Ireland can produce ? 
— and that before she has had a chance to offer 
it to anybody else. What boots it that most of 
us would be glad to have a market at our door 
ready to snap up whatever we have to sell? With 
Ireland it is different. The Scotchman, the Welsh- 
man and the Ulsterman, are rather pleased that 
they are not compelled to seek a market at the 
ends of the earth but with the Sinn Fein Irishman 
it is an altogether different matter. These others 
lack ambition and aspiration, and it is the repres- 
sion of aspiration that constitutes cruelty. With 
Paddy it is different. He does not enjoy at any 
price, the feeding of greedy England. Why 
should he not sell his over-plus of carrots and 
spuds in North Greenland where such things are 
scarce, and why should not Bridget be permitted 
to sell her surplus butter and eggs in Patagonia, 
where the hens do not get time to lay between 
sun-up and sun-down and where the temperature 
is rather inimical to the product of the chum? In 
both cases, Bridget and Pat would not only enjoy 
the inalienable right of commercial freedom, but 
would have a chance to exercise that altruism to 
which they so ardently aspire, as well as to cul- 
tivate the friendship of peoples capable of under- 
standing and appreciating their aspirations. It is 
too bad altogether; but it may alleviate somewhat 

[21] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

the outraged feelings of Sinn Fein to know that 
there are other people in other lands, who are in 
exactly in the same predicament. Exploited and 
in bondage to hard hearted and exacting aggrega- 
tions of population, they surely if they knew it, 
would come to have a comradeship and a fellow 
feeling for Pat, that would go far in the waj^ of 
soothing his lacerated and bleeding heart. 

Take for example the dairymen of southwestern 
Connecticut. These men for the most part, are 
compelled to sell their milk in New York; and 
the frugal housewives in the northeastern comer 
of the State, who try to make an honest living 
by producing eggs and chickens find that haughty 
and over-cultured Boston swoops down upon them 
and carries off all their hard earned products, 
giving them only dollars in return. Thus at both 
ends, the independence and dignity of Connecticut 
is invaded, and neither the erudition of Yale Uni- 
versity nor the financial acumen of all the Insur- 
ance Companies of Hartford, can avail in any way 
to prevent. It is a bad business all round, and 
there is little doubt that both New York and 
Boston have learned to be tyrannical and auto- 
cratic because of uninterrupted ocean traffic and 
intercourse between themselves and Liverpool and 
London. If the Sinn Fein agitator was as patri- 
otic as he claims to be, he would endeavor to 
induce Congress to pass an act forbidding the 
Cunard and White Star S. S. Lines to dock their 
ships at New York and Boston, and compelling 

[22] 



AGITATORS 

them to establish terminal facilities at Waterbury 
on the Naugatuck. 

Alas for the selfishness of human nature, the 
Sinn Fein Irishman has no thought for the suffer- 
ing and oppression of anybody but the Irish — 
this especially if he belongs to the hyphenated 
brigade on this side of the sea. If he would enter- 
tain an equal amount of consideration for the suf- 
fering and oppressed fellow citizens of his adopted 
country that he does for those of his ancestral 
home, we would count him a more patriotic citizen 
and take a deeper interest in the cause he fights 
so desperately to push to the front, and perhaps 
after a while we might grow to hate just a little 
bit, the people and institutions he insists we ought 
to hate, if we are good Americans. 

In the mean time if a rampageous Irishman 
would stand still long enough to listen, I would 
like to address him in some such words as these : — 

''Dearly beloved Jerry, we don't hate you. In 
fact there are some things about you, we rather 
like, but for the love of St. Patrick, please let us 
choose for ourselves the objects of our envy and 
hate." 

Not only do these moral and intellectual acro- 
batic contortionists, in the interest of Ireland, 
pour forth an unstinted volume of made-to-order 
cruelties and atrocities that Ireland is compelled 
to suffer, at the hands of England, but any word 
of commendation of Britain or anything Britain 
has done, sets them chattering like half a hundred 

[231 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

guinea hens. The conspicuous part England 
played in the war against Germany is particularly 
exasperating, and in itself constitutes an atrocity 
against Ireland, and anybody who dares whisper 
the facts, is a poltroon and an assassin of the demo- 
cratic ideal. Not long ago General Haig, in a 
rather matter of fact way, made some statements 
about the army he commanded during the war, 
and forthwith he became the target for a broadside 
of vituperative mustard gas, thrown by a battalion 
of hyphenated projectors, that ought to have 
silenced that garrulous Scotchman from now till 
the millenium dawn. What does Haig know about 
the war anyway? He was only in the fight four 
years and three months and he spent the whole 
time fussing about in France and Belgium. What 
does he know compared with the men who did 
their fighting from the top of a soap box, along 
the curb on Broadway, or some equally exposed 
and dangerous platform in New York or Boston 
or Philadelphia, — or in close consultation and 
cooperation with Bernsdorf, as how best to cripple 
American factories that were furnishing supplies, 
or how to strike terror into the heart of Britain 
by bombing to death women and children in the 
defenceless towns and cities of England? Haig 
had better keep his mouth shut. 

Then too there is that make-believe American 
Admiral called Sims! Wliat does he know about 
the part England played either on land or sea? 
He was hobnobing with the Poobahs of London, 



AGITATORS 

when he ought to have been on board his ship. 
Besides all this he is a Canadian bom, and that 
ought to disqualify him from knowing anything, 
and especially from being a true American Citizen. 
The only true Americans are those of Irish blood 
or birth. No wonder seventeen thousand of them 
hissed and booed the President of our country 
together with Admiral Sims, in Madison Square 
Garden, for drinking tea and eating jam, made 
in King George 's kitchen. 

Of course it comes mighty near to bringing on 
an attack of appendicitis in one of these spell- 
binders, to have anybody call attention to any of 
the achievements of England in the war, to some 
of the rest of us however it is a very interesting 
story. Intelligent people in every land, — all but 
Sinn Feiners and they like the Prussian, are super- 
intelligent, — marvel at the part played by the 
tight little Island and her down-trodden dependen- 
cies. A million volunteers, without compulsion or 
conscription, without even a request, flocked from 
every point of the compass, to help the Mother 
Land when the Prussian and Sinn Fein sprang at 
the throat of civilization. Of course if they had 
been alive, as are the Irish, to the tyranny under 
which they grovel, they would not have done it. 

Nearly twenty million souls transported in 
safety, to and from the various scenes of conflict 
by the British navy, was of course a put up job 
just to make the friends of Irish freedom feel bad. 
But strangest and most intolerable of all perhaps, 

[25] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

was the fact that when England had been fight- 
ing with desperation for four years and ought to 
have been exhausted, and of course was down and 
out, according to the rules of logic and the hyphen- 
ated brigade, she was still able to plug along to 
the day of the Armistice. With insolent arro- 
gance, in the last three months of the war, of the 
808,000 prisoners taken, the British armies bagged 
350,000, leaving the balance to be parcelled out 
among the other armies of the allies. Even in 
the last throes of dissolution, her selfish grasping 
disposition had to assert itself. Some 10,000 field 
guns and heavy cannon were captured during 
these months, and of these the English took 4,000 
— nearly twice as many as any other army, while 
her modest — or — immodest bag — of 40,000 
Machine guns, piled on top of all, at a time when 
by rights she ought to have been taking the count, 
was a crowning impertinence, amounting almost 
to an atrocity laid upon the burdened shoulders 
of patient Paddy Fein. 

It used to be better than vaudeville, my son, — 
to listen to the orators on Broadway in the early 
years of the war, and many a time I wished you 
had been by my side to enjoy the show. One of 
the stock-in-trade subjects expatiated upon was 
the ''cowardly slackers" of Great Britain. If by 
any chance the United States should get into the 
war on the side of the Allies, one of the first duties 
the American army would have to perform, would 
be to drive the several hundred thousand cowardly 

[26] 



AGITATORS 

British troops up to the front line trenches, and 
make them fight. 

So far as I have been informed, none of these 
brilliant spell-binders of the Sinn Fein aristocracy 
has claimed that this is the task the American 
army had to undertake and carry into execution 
during the last months of the war. When they 
wake up and get on their job as they ought, this is 
undoubtedly what they will discover. The report of 
General Pershing that the American force fought 
a brilliant campaign in the Argonne up in front, 
is all poppy-cock. Our doughboys were in the 
rear, driving the British forward and making 
them fight. Pershing! Wliat does he know about 
the war? He too has been over drinking King 
George's tea. 

After all however, you and I my boy, and every- 
body else who has read a bit of history, knows that 
the Britisher while he seldom provokes a quarrel, 
will fight at the drop of a hat and will hold on 
till his opponent is on his back. Then when he 
cries enough, Johnnie Bull picks him up, brushes 
the dust off his clothes and feeds him on tea and 
gooseberry tart. A queer strange fellow is this 
John Bull, — tyrannizing with brutal cruelty over 
Ireland and treating all the rest of the world to 
marmalade and chocolate bars. 



[27] 



CHAPTER IV 

The Man in the Red Hat 

IT IS reported that over in Boston Town, the 
other day a red-hatted man declared that for 
seven centuries, Ireland had stood out against 
the world. This is a more than usually interesting 
affirmation, is it not! 

We have been more or less familiar with the 
attitude suggested by the protest, — *'I'm agin 
the government;" but so far as I know, this is the 
first time the proposition has been expanded so as 
to include the whole earth. Something of a scrap 
this to be sure, both as to bulk and duration ! To 
learn from good authority that Pat has been 
scrapping with the entire race and for such a 
length of time, is a matter of lively interest. We 
can hardly doubt the capacity and willingness of 
the man from Erin, but hardly feel prepared to 
admit his ability to camouflage so successfully, as 
to hood-wink everybody into believing that his 
feuds were merely faction fights, or at best no 
more than furious onslaughts against the tyranny 
of Westminster. It is perhaps well to know that 
he is and has been for long enough, out for the 
scalp of the entire race. 

It is of an Irishman I believe, that the story 

[28] 



THE MAN IN THE RED HAT 

is told, that by some chance he got a bit of Lim- 
burger cheese on his lip, and ever after he swore 
the whole world smelt bad. Possibly that is the 
explanation of the matter, and makes clear that 
the problem of Paddy is a perennial and hopeless 
one. The Boston orator or some other, com- 
plained that the world had long enough laughed 
at the claims and demands of Ireland. It is doubt- 
less true that the world has indulged somewhat in 
levity in days gone by, and the world laughed 
again and went on with its work, when the man 
in the red tile sent forth his pitiful wail, but then 
the world has humor and the red-hatted man 
hasn't any. Men who wear red hats never have. 

It was Henry Ward Beecher I believe, who 
said when a good and pious female of his con- 
gregation, chided him for his levity and his readi- 
ness to break into a laugh; — '*If the Almighty 
doesn't want us to laugh why does He let so many 
funny things happen?" If Pat would have us 
preserve a grave and serious demeanor why does 
he keep reminding us of our simian ancestry — 
his and ours? Monkeys in a cage sometimes 
become furious when spectators laugh at their 
antics, and the boys laugh all the more, because 
they can't help it. I'm afraid that is somewhat 
the way with the world, when Pat goes into con- 
tortions over his pains and his woes. 

But to speak with a seriousness becoming the 
situation, it is too bad that the sorrows and 
sufferings of Ireland have been ignored and 

[29] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

laughed at for all these long years. No other 
people would have held out as long or have had 
any breath left to cry out with in protest against 
their wrongs. The vigor and vitality of the race 
are in no way more clearly shown than in this 
matter. Seldom does he forget what it was he 
had for a grievance, but when he does he always 
has mentors ready to remind him as to where he 
was at. 

I once knew a family in which was a little girl 
who was something of a tarmagant, and when 
things didn't go to suit her she made the whole 
house fairly sizzle with her passionate outcry. 
On one occasion she had been the center of a 
cyclonic outburst of fury for half an hour or more 
and when the storm began to abate and the calm 
to return, she noticed another little child sitting 
on the floor playing with a toy. She held out her 
hand for it and smiled as her little friend gave 
up her plaything. It was only for a moment or 
two however, for she suddenly remembered that 
she had business of graver import to attend to 
than playing with toys. Dashing the object to the 
floor, she screamed ; — ' ' Mamma, Mamma, what 
was it I was crying about just now?" 

It seems to the rest of the world that Pat is 
sometimes like the little girl, and when he does 
forget I notice that a delegation of hyphenated 
Americans is always sure to be ready to go over 
and recall to his mind what it was he was whining 
about. It is indeed well that there are broad and 

[30] 



THE MAN IN THE RED HAT 

capable minds on the alert to discover and drag 
into light of day some at least of the multitudi- 
nous wrongs and oppressions that the Irish are 
constantly being subjected to by the other races 
and nationalities of the world, especially the 
Anglo Saxon. Unable to protect and defend them- 
selves, they ought to have the privilege of crying 
out to high heaven, in some such language as the 
Boston orator is reported to have used, against 
the cruel burdens that are laid upon them. 

It is astonishing when one thinks of it, just 
how harsh and cruel the human household can be 
towards an unfortunate member that has in some 
way incurred the displeasure of the rest. All 
the pigs in a pen and all the pullets in a coop will 
poke and peck at what the Scotch folk call a 
shargar, but humans are not pigs or chickens 
and it ought not to be so among them. It is little 
wonder that when big-hearted Germany began 
a crusade against the rest of the world in order 
that she might enjoy the rights that she too was 
denied, Sinn Fein resolutely and bravely stepped 
out and stood by her side. There seemed some 
chance at last that the aspirations of liberty- 
loving people would have recognition, and such 
as were not liberty-loving would be assigned to 
their proper place under the domination of those 
who ought to be given power and control. 

Discrimination against the Irish has far- 
reaching ramifications and it is remarkable to 
discover how much of it is traceable directly or 

[31] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

indirectly to British tyranny and oppression. 
There are few people for instance, upon whom 
the principles of Anglo Saxon jurisprudence press 
as heavily as upon the Irish. The law courts 
everywhere and with vindictive frequency, are to 
be found making attacks upon Paddy and laying 
their heavy and tyrannical hands upon him. This 
oppression makes itself felt not only in his own 
land and because of English rule, but in this land 
of the free and the home of the brave. Would it 
not seem as if there was hardly a prison or peni- 
tentiary from one end of the land to the other 
which does not appear to exist for the purpose of 
meddling with Paddy's freedom? Everywhere 
it would seem, both in the old world and the new, 
he is being attacked and I for one would never 
have had my eyes opened to the iniquity, if Sinn 
Fein and Mr. Red-Hat hadn't spoken out so fear- 
lessly at the present time. It is little wonder that a 
cataclysmic rumpus broke out in the Bolshevistic 
menagerie in Madison Square Garden some time 
ago, and worse riots than that will ensue, unless 
the world ceases to impose its repressive and 
tyrannical laws upon a patient and long-suffering 
race. No wonder there are periodic brain-storms 
among the Friends of Irish Freedom. 

At this point it might be worth while to notice, 
that when Irishmen fly at one another's throats, 
which they almost invariably do when there are 
no other throats to fly at, as instance the happy 
Sinn Fein family after the Anglo-Irish treaty was 



THE MAN IN THE RED HAT 

signed and the Britisli forces were withdrawn, — 
they themselves are never to blame. It is only 
when somebody else incites them to it that they 
do this thing. 

To try to be serious for a moment, however, 
this statement that the Irish race has been in 
conflict with all other races for centuries, has a 
startling and significant appropriateness when 
one recalls some facts connected with the 
American Civil War. Large claims are made for 
the part men of Irish blood played in that great 
conflict and these claims are amply justified. 
Americanized Irishmen were among the most 
valiant defenders of the Northern cause. They 
fought bravely and loyally for the flag of their 
adopted country; but forty thousand or more of 
them fought as valiantly in the armies of the 
Confederacy, and against the flag of the country 
in which they had chosen to live. Not all of the 
Irish by any means, were champions of freedom 
and the Union. Still more significant in the light 
of our own day, is the unquestioned fact that the 
greatest menace to the success of the North, was 
produced by the attitude of Irishmen in the 
Northern States. One has only to read the files 
of New York papers of the summer of 1863, to 
realize that the Draft Riots of that year did more 
to bring the cause of the North face to face with 
possible defeat than any other single incident 
during the four years of the war. During these 
riots not only was New York City the scene of 

[33] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

wild barbarism and bloodshed, but in every city- 
all over the North where any considerable popu- 
lation of Irish was to be found, similar outbreaks 
against the government and the war, were staged. 
It is interesting and perhaps (in the nature of 
things) quite reasonable to discover that while 
Irishmen were the chief actors in this exhibition 
of loyalty (?), Germans were their chief allies. 
In 1863 as in 1914 and following years, Paddy and 
Fritz clasped hands in an effort to maintain their 
personal freedom at the expense of everybody 
else. The leading rioters and lawbreakers of that 
day were of the primitive typical Irish race, and 
they stabbed Uncle Sam in the back when he 
was struggling for his life in defence of liberty 
and justice, in exactly the same way that Sinn 
Fein in our day, stabbed John Bull and the Allies 
in the back when they were at death grips with the 
autocracy and brutal tyranny of the Kaiser. 
Admiral Sims and our gallant seamen met with 
the same spirit and attitude in Cork, claiming to 
represent Ireland in 1917, that General Nugent, 
himself a man of Irish blood and whose house was 
burned by the mob, met with in New York in 
1863, and in both instances the cause of civiliza- 
tion was trembling in the balance. Evidently true, 
it would seem, is the statement that it has been 
the Irish way to stand out against the world in 
its struggle for liberty and freedom and the true 
democratic ideal. 
It is quite clear that in the 60 's, Irishmen were 

[34] 



THE MAN IN THE RED HAT 

not in any way exceptional in their loyalty to the 
cause of the Union. They were as good as any but 
no better than citizens of other racial stocks. 

Irishmen however, were exceptional in precipi- 
tating these brutal Draft Riots that nearly 
wrecked the Northern Cause, and they obtained 
an unenviable record in swelling the volume of 
desertions from the Union Army. 

Men were shot down in the streets of New York 
just as at a later time and in the same way, they 
were shot down in the streets and lanes of Ireland. 
It was the same old tragedy acted out in 1863, 
that was staged anew during the world war, and 
in the period that followed the signing of the 
Armistice. 

It is estimated that in New York alone, the 
rioters numbered in the neighborhood of forty 
thousand. Mobs of them are said to have chased 
Negroes as hounds would a fox, for of course it 
was inferred that the war was carried on in the 
interest of freedom for the black man. Factory 
workmen were terrorized and compelled to quit 
work, and every enterprise looking to a vigorous 
prosecution of the war, was well-nigh brought to 
a stand-still. Paddy runs true to type wherever 
and whenever he has a chance to map out his 
own course and follow the bent of his own mind 
and spirit. There has been no struggle in defence 
of democratic liberty, during the last four hundred 
years at least, the success of which, he has not 
menaced. Army officers and officials of the 

[35] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

government declared that the Draft Eiots tested 
the United States Government almost as greatly as 
did the Southern Rebellion itself. New York State 
troops had to be called home from the battlefield 
to cope with the situation, at a time when every 
available man was sorely needed at the front. 
The Archbishop of the day sought to pacify the 
mob by telling them that he did not see a single 
man among them that looked like a rioter, but he 
succeeded no better than did a dignitary of 
our day when he crawled into a beautiful hole and 
pulled it in after him, by referring the riot of 
Thanksgiving Day 1920, to the ** Psychology of 
the Crowd. ' ' 

When the Irish problem has been settled in 
Ireland, and has been transferred to this Continent 
where it rightly belongs, will the United States 
have to fight the Irish some day! The malicious 
activity of the propagandist and the intriguer, 
seems to make the proposition look like a possi- 
bility, if not a probability. Americans are a patient 
and long-sutfering people, but if patience ever 
gives way, then woe-betide these meddlers and 
mischief makers, both lay and clerical. They will 
be put in their own place with a thud that will be 
heard round the world in company with the shot 
that was fired at Concord Bridge. 

Did you ever think how this undemocratic 
Prohibition movement hits Paddy? There can be 
little doubt that it presses and was designed to 
press more heavily on the Irish than upon any 

[36] 



THE MAN IN THE RED HAT 

other race. Their personal liberties are being 
invaded to an intolerable degree. Then too, is 
there not more than a suspicion that England has 
a hand in it, and that it is only another example 
of her vindictive cruelty in trying to keep poor 
Paddy Fein down? Selfishly keeping her own 
beer and gin, is it not more than likely that 
England is at the bottom of this whole movement 
in the United States? It is sufficient to suggest 
that England as well as everybody knows that if 
prohibition of the liquor traffic can be enacted and 
enforced in America, it will strike at Irish liberty 
almost as hard as a similar enactment would do 
in the homeland itself. So why should we refrain 
from laying some of the blame on England? We 
suspect her of less likely things. She keeps her 
own public houses open and protects their owners 
in the profitable business of trading in rum, while 
taking satisfaction in the fact that multitudes of 
honest, industrious, law-abiding Irish-American 
saloon keepers and bar-tenders are being turned 
out of house and home, to beg their bread from 
door to door, or perish with cold and hunger in 
the gutter. To be sure England will take an added 
satisfaction in being assured that not a few 
German-Americans will share the fate of their 
fellow martyrs of Hibernian extraction. Once 
again we can understand the close and tender 
feeling of brotherhood that exists between the 
Prussian and Pat, when it is discovered that to- 

[37] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

gether they are the victims of a tyranny as cruel 
and vindictive as this. 

But to speak with sober seriousness, — it would 
perhaps ease some of the heavy load the Irish- 
man has to carry because of the attitude of the 
rest of the world, if in some way he could be per- 
suaded to take a broader outlook on life. I fear 
the dear fellow is a little bit childish in this re- 
spect, and lacking in a sense of brotherhood. Like 
his pig he is tethered to a stake in his own door- 
yard, and to him the conditions that prevail within 
the radius of his string are the conditions that 
should obtain wherever humans live and move and 
have their being. There is no other possible 
environment. In politics and religion, as in other 
things, his horizon never lifts itself beyond the 
circumference of a circle drawn with geometric 
exactitude, at the end of his tether. The conse- 
quence is that, as the rubicon rotundity in the 
scarlet head-dress, reminds us, he is not only anti- 
British but anti-everything that fails to give atten- 
tion when he begins to whine and whimper. This 
is doubtless why the name and motto — * ' Sinn 
Fein" — 'Ourselves Alone' — has come into vogue. 
It stands for an egoistic primitiveness that has 
been so largely outgrown elsewhere. It is surely 
an interesting fact that here again the German 
and the Sinn Fein Irishman are so much alike. 
They manifest the same kind of a narrow and 
extreme individualism. There is no place in all 
the world where the like of it is to be seen — only 

[38] 



THE MAN IN THE RED HAT 

in Ireland and Germany, — save that it crops up 
now and again in the Senate of the United States 
of America. It is the attitude of the child mind 
that can not reason, and with which there is no 
possibility of argument. It sees only one end to 
be sought for and attained, and that an immediate 
and selfishly personal one. Of course this attitude 
inevitably comes into contact and conflict with in- 
terests that it can not conceive of as having any 
existence at all. No interest has any business to 
exist except its own. It was this spirit that 
brought on the European war. It was this spirit 
that made it the most brutal and atrocious war 
that was ever waged. It is this attitude of mind 
that makes the German unable to understand why 
the whole world looks upon him with horror and 
disgust. It was this spirit that made Sinn Fein 
throw in his lot witli the German. It is this 
spirit that made him excuse and paliate the un- 
heard of atrocities of the Kaiser. It was this 
spirit that made him do the thing that was most 
contemptible of all, — desert the Kaiser when he 
saw the Kaiser's jig was up. It was this spirit 
that made him wheel into line, and then claim that 
he it was, and nobody else that won the war for 
the allied cause. It was this selfsame spirit that 
after all, made him spue vitriol upon President 
Wilson because he didn't secure for him a chair at 
the Peace Table. Of course Sinn Fein should 
have been represented at Versailles, but his place 
was behind the palings with the Boche. The Allies 

[39] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

mercifully saved the Boche from that humiliation. 
The Boche is a gentleman of dignity and worth 
contrasted with Sinn Fein. 

Yes, my friend of the red sombero, you did an 
unkind and unjust thing when you suggested that 
all the Irish people have put themselves where 
Sinn Fein has put himself, — up against and out- 
side the civilization of all the earth. 



[40] 



CHAPTER V 

Hate 

THE Prussian and Pat are the supreme expon- 
ents and devotees of the cult of hate. No 
nation nor race has ever been able to bring 
to such perfection the exercise of this faculty as 
they. They seem to have reduced the whole thing 
to an exact science. At least, in the case of the 
Prussian, with his bent of mind and his predilec- 
tion for efficiency, this would seem to be so. With 
Pat the thing appears to be rather a matter 
of heredity coupled with an education and espe- 
cially an environment, in which iteration and 
reiteration has been so insistent and persistent 
from infancy, that hate has become a sort of a 
second nature to the man from Erin. The main 
distinction would seem to be, that hate with the 
Prussian, as is invariably the case with all his pos- 
sessions and attainments, is a machine made affair, 
while with Pat it is a growth, — a disease if you 
will, which he can not help any more than he can 
help the color of his hair or the length of his lip. 
When hate becomes chronic the case is a well- 
nigh hopeless one, and the condition is pitiful in 
the extreme. The far-reaching and disintegrating 
effects of hate upon individual and national char- 

[41] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

acter, are often of the most tragic kind. As some 
one lias intimated, those who snffer most from 
hate, are not the hated but those who hate. Few 
things there are that dwarf and shrivel and burn 
to a cinder the souls of men and women as hate. 
As some wise man has put it, — ' * Hatred is heavier 
freight for the shipper than for the consignee." 
The truth of this principle was forcibly demon- 
strated in Germany during the war. The culti- 
vation and development of hate was well illus- 
trated by a cartoon in Punch representing a 
German family taking its morning hate. The in- 
culcation of hate in home and school, was a part 
of the preparation by which Germany expected 
to subjugate the world. Without the pretext of 
a cause save that which she imagined and con- 
jured up, the nation taught her youth to hate, with 
the expectation that when the time was ripe for 
her to spring at the world 's civilization, teeth and 
claws would be so whetted by the malevolence of 
hate, that they would rend and tear until nothing 
was left. True enough a carnival of brutality sucli 
as the world had never seen, was the result; but 
the reaction was swift and sure, and the brand 
of Cain is on the Prussian's brow. If the maxim 
of the great Master Teacher; — "They that take 
the sword shall perish with the sword. ' ' — has been 
vindicated, it is no less true that those w^io em- 
ployed hate to help in bringing to pass their selfish 
and wicked ends, have become the wretched and 
pitiful victims of their own spite. This I fear, is 

[42] 



HATE 

more certainly and more frequently true than men 
realize. 

Tuniing to Ireland, — it is an appalling spec- 
tacle to contemplate a people who for centuries, 
have cherished and cultivated hate as a cardinal 
and peculiar virtue. To inoculate generation after 
generation with the virus of hate, may be and 
undoubtedly is a menace to the objects of that 
hate; but its contagion draws within its blighting 
blistering touch all that it can reach, and in the 
end eats like a cancer the heart in which it has 
its abode. Hate distorts judgment, sears and 
deadens conscience and assassinates truth. It 
perverts all sense of proportion and is as unreason- 
ing as a pack of wolves; and this is certain to be 
the case when it is implanted and securely fixed 
within the breast, before reason has become mature 
enough to play a part in thought and conduct. 
Permeated by hate the heart can be played upon 
by the most vindictive and malevolent passions, 
and easily becomes the sport of the unprincipled 
and the depraved. Truth — the plain facts of his- 
tor\% — the mighty movements that betoken the 
progress of men and nations, can not appeal to nor 
be understood by a mind and heart choked with 
hate. Men shut themselves out from the influence 
and benefits of all democratic uplift and advance, 
when they cherish spite and hate towards those 
institutions and principles that everywhere have 
produced and developed and upheld the demo- 
cratic ideal. 

[43] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

The matter of hate as related to the problems 
of Ireland, is rather complicated and painfully dis- 
concerting from the fact that so many Irish peo- 
ple pride themselves in the possession and exer- 
cise of their hate. This I suppose is the natural 
and inevitable outcome of a hate that has been 
persisted in long enough to become something of 
a racial characteristic. A hate that lives on for 
centuries after the provocative cause that called 
it into being has been as extinct as the dodo, is 
I suppose something to be proud of, especially 
because of its tenacity and vigor if for no other 
reason. This pride is exemplified most of all in 
the spell-binders and champions who presume and 
assume to speak on behalf of the Irish people. They 
seem able not only to churn themselves and their 
hearers into froth over the real or imaginary woes 
of the Emerald Isle, but they puff themselves out 
like pouter pigeons with pride over the fact that 
the specimen of hate that lies in their hearts and 
dominates their spirits, is as lively and vicious as 
anything their ancestors of several centuries ago 
could boast. It is this I fancy, that enables them 
to distort and falsify the facts of past history 
and the plain meaning of current events without 
blinking an eye or turning a hair. I presume it 
was pride in their hate more than anything else, 
that enabled our Munchausen Triplets who visited 
Ireland lately, to bring back a whole cart load of 
atrocities that had no existence save in their own 
diseased and distorted imaginations. The only 

[44] 



HATE 

thing approaching an atrocity in connection with 
this incident, was constituted out of the atrocious 
falsehoods these men brought over for circulation 
in America. It is doubtless this same spirit that 
produces that strange brand of patriotism the 
chief ingredient of which, is hate and that leads 
the possessors and exponents thereof to insist that 
the patriotism of all the rest of us, is faulty and 
weak because it does not rest on a substratum 
of hate. To speak with all seriousness, is it not 
time that a patriotism that is made to hinge on 
hatred of some other countiy or people, or a 
friendship that depends on the same principle, 
should be recognized to say the least, as a brand 
of these two virtues not greatly to be desired or 
to be proud of, — constituting together a rather 
ignoble and nauseating thing. That patriotism 
or friendship that has to be bolstered up by the 
exercise of hate in some other direction, is an 
insecure thing to tie to, and is pretty sure sooner 
or later, to pierce the hand that leans upon it. 

I am glad my son, that your friendship whiich 
I value highly, is not a reward for my hate in 
some direction in which you have cause for offence. 
I can not imagine your friendship towards any- 
body, to be a commodity to be bartered in this 
way. It is this kind of barter however that the 
Sinn Fein Irishman ever insists upon. It is in 
this way that he seeks to involve in his own deg- 
radation and condemnation all with whom he 
comes in contact. Some daj^ the world will 

[45] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

awake to a clean, sweet, fresh morning in which 
all that bastard type of patriotism and friend- 
ship will have been banished from the earth, and 
when the motto, — * ' Ourselves alone ' ' — will be 
unthinkable among any people. All true lovers 
of Ireland, may well wish for her that with the 
pink of a new youth on her cheek and the light 
of a new hope in her eye, she may stand with 
all the rest of the forward-looking folk, to greet 
the sunrise on that day. To this end may grace 
be given her to repudiate the malevolent agitators 
who are ever seeking to re-infect and fasten upon 
her the leprosy of hate. 

The hate and spite and falsehood that is being 
sown broad-cast in our beloved country at the 
present time, is worse and a greater menace to 
the free institutions of America, than anything 
the Potsdam gang ever thought of before the war. 

The menace of the propaganda of hate is that 
it creates suspicion and distrust and prejudice. It 
is the inveterate foe of that brotherhood for which 
the world is hungry and which is to be looked for, 
first of all among those people who speak a com- 
mon language, and possess a common heritage in 
literature and religion and law, and whose free 
institutions flow from a common fountain head. 
Peace and concord do not find in hate, a friendly 
soil in which to grow. It was the sporadic patches 
of this soil handed down from revolutionary days 
and fortified by the school histories of a genera- 
tion ago that made the German propaganda a 

[46] 



HATE 

menace to the peace and security of this nation's 
life before we entered the war, or that would have 
made that propaganda a most dangerous menace 
had there been more of that kind of soil in which 
to plant its seed. The will to think ill carries in 
its bosom a poison that may paralyze and destroy 
within as well as without, and it is an evil spirit 
to be exorcised by every means within our power. 

There is possibly, nothing that has as much 
potency in the direction of counteracting hate, as 
the possession of a healthy and lively sense of 
humor. Hate can not live long in a heart where 
humor dwells. One of the best antidotes for the 
poison of hate, is the presence of a generous supply 
of the saving grace of humor. It is indeed the 
best antitoxin the world knows anything about, 
and it has saved men and nations from many a 
black and threatening storm, — from many a 
crushing disaster. Well might all the nations in 
these days, long and pray for a mighty increase of 
it everywhere, I feel sure, my good doctor friend 
must have many a phial of it on the shelves of 
his office. It is a cure for more of the ills of life 
than the doctors realize. 

Early in the war I was taking dinner in a hotel 
in a New England town. I was belated and the 
other guests filtered out, until all that was left was 
another gentleman and myself seated at either end 
of a long table. Some pleasantry among the 
waiters arose at the other end of the room, and 
we two men made commonplace remarks about 

[47] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

♦v 

the value and health of a joyous and hearty laugh. 
Passing from one thing to another we spoke of 
the saving grace of humor in human life and ex- 
perience ; when I ventured the suggestion that pos- 
sibly there would have been no European war if 
the Kaiser had had a little bit of humor in his 
make up ; but, Whew ! I was swept off my bearings 
in a trice. Unconsciously I had uncovered a Pro- 
German. I was informed that England and Eng- 
land alone, was responsible for this war. She was 
its sole and only cause. If England had only 
spoken the word, both Prance and Russia would 
have pulled in their horns. Of course I had noth- 
ing to say. The argument was unanswerable. 

I felt provoked at myself because I had run the 
risk of opening up a debate with a stranger in a 
public place. At the same time I was glad of 
an opportunity to study at close range, the psychol- 
ogy and perhaps also, the physiology of hate; for 
since that afternoon, when I took charge of your 
office and at your request, told your patients you 
would be back soon, when I knew you wouldn't, I 
have become something of a diagnostician. At 
any rate I discovered that hate is not only a serious 
malady in itself, but is especially troublesome 
because of the complications that are likely to 
develop, and the evils that are almost certain to 
follow in its wake. Anyway I found out that hate 
is accompanied by at least two diverse and dis- 
turbing maladies, — to wit ; Astigmatism on the 
one hand and Colic on the t)ther. 

[48] 



CHAPTER VI 

HUMOB 

SO YOU think I do Paddy an injustice when I 
suggest that he is lacking in humor. Far be 
it from me to rob Pat of any of his per- 
quisites. I would be tlie last man to do that, 
and Pat would be the very last person I would 
think of practicing such brigandage upon. 

It is true that the world has given the Irish 
credit for being a humorous folk. It is one of 
the things we have taken for granted and have 
never thought to question. But it has come to 
be a puzzle with many of the most ardent 
admirers and well-wishers of the man from 
Erin, how it possibly can be that when it comes 
to a consideration of the wrongs to which he 
has been subjected and the rights of which he 
is being deprived, he persists in failing to show 
a single trace of the possession of any such 
faculty. 

We have come to feel that the Prussian, in 
the egregiously serious way in which he takes 
himself, is the outstanding example of a man 
in whose make-up the grace of humor finds no 
place. His claims to superiority, his .demands 
for special and unusual recognition, his strut- 

[49] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

ting about in military boots with a warrior's 
helmet on his head and a sword on his thigh, 
makes the normal human laugh and nudge his 
neighbor; but Fritz goes through the motions 
without cracking a smile. He is entirely with- 
out any sense of the incongruous and the ridicu- 
lous. Hence if the world does not take him at 
his own valuation, he fails to recognize the fact, 
or if he does he attributes it to the world's stu- 
pidity or its jealousy, and quite often he seems 
to entertain a mixture of these explanations to 
account for the world's attitude. The Prussian 
can never put himself in the other man's place, 
— can never see the other side of a question, 
can not indeed imagine for a moment that there 
is or ever could be any other side. He is bound 
by tradition and the letter of things, and when 
he ventures out of the beaten track, it is to 
slavishly imitate with apparently no conception 
of the possibility of desirability of adaptation to 
new conditions or needs. When he does depart 
from his model, it is to follow some geometric or 
mathematical conception that manifests no flexi- 
bility of mind or spirit. Brute force coupled 
with a primitive animal cunning and a super- 
ficial veneer, are the things he relies upon to 
carry him to the front. He is childishly eager 
to be rated as interested in, and able to do the 
things other humans take to naturally, but which 
he laboriously flounders through. He is an eagle 
that would swim like a duck, and a duck that 

[50] 



HUMOR 

would run like a hound. He rows a boat with his 
spurs on so to speak, and insists that is the only 
way a man of Kultur should row a boat. In like 
manner he plays tennis in evening dress and a 
top hat, that is if he ever plays the game at all. 
He can imitate the gayety of Paris and dress 
like a gentleman from Bond street, but he pushes 
wife and children off the pavement into the gut- 
ter, and eats his dinner while they wait and look 
on. When at length he took time to look over 
his own garden wall, he saw other nations pos- 
sessed of colonies and he thought it would be a 
good idea for him to have colonies too, but his 
colonies and their system of management were 
turned out on a lathe. Tliey didn't grow as col- 
onies to be colonies must do. He saw other 
nations with navies and he had one made to 
order for himself. When he got it he didn 't know 
what to do with it. He surrendered it without 
a fight and then grew brave and sunk his ships 
when he thought nobody was looking. Most of 
these things Fritzie does or fails to do in his own 
way, and with his head where his heels ought to 
be, and for the most part because he is destitute 
of the sense of humor. 

That I'addy is not in all respects a counterpart 
of his illustrious friend and preceptor, is largely 
due I tliink, to the fact that he has a better heart 
and a poorer head. In his own way however and 
to a degree in keeping with his insularity, he 
runs the Prussian a close second, and yet the 

[SI] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

world says the Irisliniaii has humor. I'm afraid 
I will have to assume the ungracious attitude 
of disputing the world's opinion. Just as Paddy 
and Fritz have similar conceptions as to free- 
dom and liberty, — of democracy and the prin- 
ciples on which democracy rests, so I fear we will 
have to put them in the same category in the 
matter of humor. Pat has a nimble wit and this 
often saves the day for him, while the Prussian 
flounders and lumbers along, even to the extent 
of frequently falling over himself. 

Pat has wit. He is probably the wittiest man 
on earth; but wit is not humor. It may indeed 
exist where not a trace of humor is to be found. 
The two qualities are often confounded and mis- 
taken for one another, and perhaps this is not to 
be wondered at, seeing that the distinction is 
rather a subtle one and somewhat difficult to make 
clear. It is however true as I have said, that wit 
may exist apart from humor, but the problem is 
complicated when we realize that humor does not 
exist apart from wit. There may be wit without 
humor, but not humor without wit. Wit depends 
for its effect upon the rapidity and brilliancy of 
the point, and is mainly if not altogether, an 
intellectual product and for the most part, plays 
with the resemblance of ideas. Humor is a 
broader, deeper thing. It may indeed act with 
as much spontaneity as wit, but it has a more 
delicate quality and as Lowell points out, sug- 
gests more remote analogies and essential incon- 

[52] 



HUMOR 

gruities. Wit by itself is superficial — it sparkles 
and effervesces and is soon spent. Humor runs 
on and is pervasive and diffusive, for it is a thing 
of the spirit and soul, which wit of and by itself, 
is not. Humor has a deep sense of the incongruous 
and the ridiculous. Wit accomplishes its purpose 
and gives surprise and delight apart entirely 
from the exercise of any such sense. It deals with 
resemblances in words and ideas perhaps, rather 
than with differences. The less obvious the 
resemblances of course, the more startling the 
effect and the greater the delight. The pun is a 
species of wit, — it is less frequently an example 
of humor. 

De Quincy has said: — ''While wit is purely an 
intellectual thing, into every act of the humorous 
mind there is an influx of the moral nature; rays 
direct or refracted from the will and the affec- 
tions, from the disposition and the temperament 
enter into all humor, and hence it is that humor 
is of a diffusive quality, pervading an entire 
course of thought: while wit, because it has no 
existence apart from certain logical relations 
of thought which are definitely assignable and 
can be counted even, — is always punctually con- 
centrated within the circle of a few words." 

This statement suggests the nature of the Ger- 
man mind and personality, in the utter absence 
of any sense of humor, and at the same time sug- 
gests that it is wit the Irish as a race are pos- 
sessed of and not humor. 

[53] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

Primitive and backward races are singularly 
devoid of the faculty of humor and D 'Israeli goes 
as far as to say: — 

''The ancients indeed appear not to have pos- 
sessed that comic quality that we understand as 
humor, nor can I discover a word which exactly 
corresponds with our term humor, in any lan- 
guage ancient or modern." It is certainly quite 
safe to affirm that the German has no such word 
in his vocabulary. The language he uses is essen- 
tially a barbarous language and the status of a 
race as to its advancement in civilization, is fixed 
in no way as well perhaps, or with as much cer- 
tainty, as by its language, and one of the char- 
acteristics of the barbarian is that he is without 
humor. 

Another safe venture is the assumption that the 
Irish Gaelic that Sinn Fein has been seeking so 
frantically to revamp and galvanize into life, has 
no word that even in the remotest way would 
serve as a synonym for our word humor. You 
may wager your new Ford on that proposition, 
my son! There have been many funny happen- 
ings in the struggles of Ireland, but nothing could 
be much funnier than the scene in Dublin when 
the so called Irish Republic was inaugurated. 
The acrobatic contortions of the representatives 
trying to spell out their set pieces and prepared, 
resolutions in Gaelic, with the serious demeanor 
of graven images, was prodigiously funny to 
everybody but Pat. By the use of a dead lan- 

[54] 



HUMOR 

guage, (anything but English would have done,) 
on this momentous and historically important 
occasion, the whole world was to be profoundly 
impressed and made to realize that a new era in 
world history had begun. No other human 
beings, save perhaps, the Prussians, would have 
taken this course. When, in order to invest with 
dignity and serious gravity an occasion which 
they feel to be of vital importance to themselves, 
a group of men only succeed in placing on the 
stage a farcical comedy, they surely can not be 
credited with any very highly developed sense 
of humor. A like procedure, we are told, has 
been followed by DeValera in marking his com- 
munications to Lloyd George as "official transla- 
tions." This would indeed be funny if it were 
not so childish. This of course is a part of the 
insistent and juvenile clamor that peevishly 
claims for the Irish a separate nationality and a 
separate and distinct language of their own. 
Lloyd George is as much a Celt as any of the Sinn 
Fein people, and he probably knows more about 
Celtic language and literature than DeValera and 
his entire "cabinet" put together. It is un- 
doubtedly true that there are as many people of 
pure Celtic stock in Great Britain as there are in 
Ireland and a larger percentage of them use a 
Celtic form of speech in their everyday life. What 
of that, wails the hysterical propagandist ? These 
people are not Irish. The Irish and their Gaelic 
are different; and that is true. A lack of humor 

[55] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

more than anything else leads them to insist upon 
going back to the Tribal stage of human exis- 
tence. 

One cannot but think of Emerson in this con- 
nection when he writes: — "What an ornament 
and safeguard is humor; far better than wit for 
a poet and writer! It is genius itself, and so 
defends from the insanities." 

Unquestionably then, one of the most signifi- 
cant facts connected with the Irish Problem, is 
the utter absence of any sense of humor in all its 
ramifications and developments. The eternal in- 
sistence that the Irish people are being discrim- 
inated against, that they are being cheated and 
robbed and oppressed whenever the essential 
principles and laws that obtain in all existence, 
begin to operate in their direction, surely bears 
out this statement. The utter inability to see 
why they should not be an exception to every 
other people, supports our contention that they 
are without humor. The inability to give and 
take — the childish unreason and stubborn insist- 
ence upon having their own way, — the juvenile 
predilection for making mountains out of mole- 
hills and the capacity for creating the mole-hills 
in the first place, pronounce the same verdict. 

Somehow Pat is a master hand at discovering 
slights where none was intended, and he has no 
equal in magnifying those slights until they 
become the most grievous and intolerable wrongs. 

Equally efficient is he in discovering special 

[S6] 



HUMOR 

privileges and rewards which it is his exclusive 
right to enjoy. This paranoic bent of mind is 
especially in evidence among the agitators and 
demagogues, who claim to speak on behalf of 
Ireland, and its presence compels us to question 
either their mentality or their humor, and we re- 
fuse to believe them insane. A genuine sense of 
humor would have saved Ireland untold suffering 
and unrest, and would have unravelled the 
tangled problem centuries ago. 

The individual who has a true sense of humor, 
enjoys a joke at his own expense. This Pat sel- 
dom if ever does. It is perhaps particularly true 
of the Scotchman, that he takes keen delight in 
poking fun at his own peccadillos and peculiari- 
ties. As a rule he extracts as much fun and en- 
joyment out of it as do those who caricature him. 

If however you value your peace of mind my 
son, do not dare to caricature an Irishman within 
a hundred miles of Kinsale Head or a block of 
Tammany Hall. 

I had scarcely written down these observations 
on the subject of humor however, when my con- 
victions on the matter received a bit of a jolt. 
There came into my hands the following mes- 
sage, sent by the Hierarchy of this country to 
Cardinal Logue in Ireland: — 

"Your Eminence: In this solemn and porten- 
tous hour of Ireland's history, we, the Bishops 
of the United States gathered in annual confer- 
ence, feel it a duty incumbent on us to extend 

[57] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

to your Eminence and your brethren of the Irish 
hierarchy the assurance of our sympathy, our 
prayers and our united good wishes for the happy 
outcome of the conference in which the repre- 
sentatives of your people are now engaged. 

Particularly at this time we are not unmindful 
of the tremendous debt the Church in this coun- 
try owes to Ireland and its people. For more 
than a century the millions of your race have 
come to our shores and by their strong faith and 
their loyal and generous help they have built up a 
church which has become the pride of Christen- 
dom and the glory of the country in which we 
dwell. And even though they have become loyal 
Americans, faithful to the flag under which they 
dwell, time has never been able to extinguish in 
their souls the love they bore to the land of their 
fathers, to the little island from which they parted 
as exiles destined never to return. 

And particularly during these recent years, 
with anxious and expectant hearts, they have 
watched the trend of events, ever hopeful that 
Providence in its wisdom might ordain that at 
last Ireland was to take its place among the 
nations of the earth. 

And indeed during these latter weeks their 
hearts were filled with pride when they saw the 
representatives of their race conduct themselves 
with a statesmanship that has challenged the 
admiration of the world. 

Therefore in this fateful hour when the future 

[58] 



HUMOR 

of Ireland trembles in the balance, it is not our 
desire, your Eminence, by any word of ours to 
peril tlie outcome of those deliberations upon 
which a world waits with bated breath. Eatlier 
in the true spirit of our holy faith, united with 
our people from every race and every station, our 
prayers ascend from every altar in the land that 
God in His wisdom may bring Ireland's misery 
of seven hundred years to an end, that this most 
apostolic race among all of God's peoples may 
receive the reward for what they have done for 
the Church of America and elsewhere by obtain- 
ing the fulfillment of their national aspirations. 

And finally that God may grant you and your 
colleagues to live to see Ireland's golden age, and 
find your people even more faithful to their 
Church in the sunburst of their new freedom 
than ever they were in the years of their exile 
and expectancy." 

Your Eminence's devoted servants in Christ. 

The Archbishops and Bishops of the United 
States. 

Is this an example of humor, or is it an evidence 
of its lack? It might be either. 



[59] 



CHAPTER VII 

The Child and the Moon 

10NCE saw a little child try to blow out the 
light of the moon, and when the moon slipped 
in behind a cloud, he clapped his tiny hands 
in glee over the success of his effort. It was a 
little pantomine so charming, that I love to recall 
it to mind now and again in order that I may enjoy 
the pretty scene once more. 

When, however, a grown man with a stubby 
beard on his lip, and a short pipe in his mouth, 
in all gravity and seriousness persists in doing 
the same thing, it becomes a grotesque and rather 
ridiculous farce. We laugh at the child with joy- 
ous appreciation. Our laughter over the per- 
formance of the man inclines to be irreverant, 
and do what we will, barely escapes falling into a 
tone of derision. 

Defenders of the rights and claims of Ireland 
are forever putting Paddy in the position of do- 
ing this thing. 

After-thought is one of the most striking char- 
acteristics of the mentality of these champions of 
the cause of Ireland. If a Sinn Fein Irishman 
had fore-sight equal to his hind-sight, he would 
surely represent the most marvellous intellectual 

[60] 



THE CHILD AND THE MOON 

development that has been produced in any race 
since time began. 

Two things this marvellous intellect is ever 
discovering. The first is the forgotten achieve- 
ments of Ireland, — her unrecognized and un- 
requited contribution to the advance of civiliza- 
tion ; — and the second is, that the unwarranted 
and unmerited credits that other people have had 
and are having placed to their account, always 
disparage and detract from the glory of the 
cause and people, this same intellect seeks to 
champion and defend. Some people can never 
hear another glorified without feeling that they 
are being robbed of some of their own well- 
deserved glory, and in the Sinn Fein Irishman, 
this attitude of mind has become a disease. He sits 
up nights discovering and polishing up grievances 
of this type, to be employed by himself or to be 
handed out and urged upon anybody he thinks 
may need them or ought to use them. 

A legal luminary somewhere, presumably of 
some eminence, for he occupies a position of 
high honor among the Knights of Columbus, 
has discovered since the war ended that the letters 
— A. E. F. American Expeditionary Force, — 
stood in doughboy parlance for ''After England 
Failed," but the doughboys had to come back 
from France to find out that they ever used the 
term. 

The brilliant advocate is greatly grieved to 
discover that the Y. M. C. A. with the connivance 

[6i] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

of the War Department, prepared and circulated 
a pamphlet designed to introduce Tommy Atkins 
to our doughboys, and to tell them what kind of a 
chap they would discover him to be ; and that this 
same pamphlet omitted to introduce and tell 
with equal lucidity, what kind of a fellow the 
doughboy would discover himself to be. This 
omission of course, was nothing short of treason 
to America and the American Army; and the 
high official gives one the impression that he 
thinks he ought to be rewarded with Knighthood 
or a SenatorsMp, for discovering and promul- 
gating such an able-bodied grievance as that. 

If the real American would only stand up for 
his rights as fearlessly as the hyphenated variety 
does, he would see that to allow or accord credit 
to another, is to barter away his own birthright, 
and at the same time prevent his country from 
occupying the commanding position in inter- 
national affairs which is her right. 

The Sinn Fein advocate need not worry how- 
ever, for the real American is too big-hearted and 
broad minded to feel that he must pull somebody 
else down in order to lift himself up, or that when- 
ever anybody else is lifted up, he is correspond- 
ingly pulled down. Agitators and narrow minded 
politicians to the contrary notwithstanding, this 
is the true American spirit that Sinn Fein is ever, 
consciously or unconsciously, trying to insult, 
and thank goodness, it is the spirit that dwells in 
the breast of multitudes of American citizens 

[62] 



THE CHILD AND THE MOON 

with Irish blood flowing in their veins. Sinn Fein, 
whether of the Simon pure stock or of the hyphen- 
ated brand, would have all the rest of us descend 
to their level, and regard every word uttered in 
commendation of another, especially of a 
Britisher, as a stab in the back for ourselves. The 
disposition to lift one 's self up by pulling another 
down, and to feel that a good word spoken in 
behalf of another, is a disparagement of one's own 
worth and importance, and is always a confession 
of inferiority. We refuse to acknowledge infer- 
iority to any race whatsoever, and for that reason 
we refuse to come under the tutelage of Sinn 
Fein. 

An interesting after-thought of the Sinn Fein 
spell-binders, is the discovery that Ireland has a 
local and racial kultur that she ought to be per- 
mitted to develop and bestow upon the rest of the 
world. Of course no obstacle has ever been placed 
in her way of doing this through all the centuries ; 
but the amusing fact is that Ireland would never 
have known that she had a Kultur, if these wonder- 
ful representatives of hers had not entered into 
partnership and association with the Boche. 

It has been discovered recently that Ireland 
gave America her freedom, and made possible the 
great Republic of the Western Hemisphere. The 
Independence of the Thirteen Colonies was prac- 
tically purchased by Irish blood and treasure. It 
was Irish love of freedom that laid the founda- 
tions of democracy in the New World. 

[631 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

Unfortunately this discovery and the claims 
founded thereupon, suggest the possibility of other 
claims. The argument proves too much, but no 
Irish agitator could be expected to recognize the 
fact. 

If Ireland is to have credit for the part played 
by men of Irish blood or ancestry in the Eevo- 
lution in America, then of course by the same rule, 
every other country or nation is entitled to credit 
for the share taken in the great struggle, by men 
who could trace their ancestry back to them. Give 
each country fullest credit for the effort and 
achievement of its emigrants and their descend- 
ents, and the place of Ireland falls far down 
the list in the rating. We are compelled at least, 
to give liberty loving Holland a much more prom- 
inent position than Ireland, in the contribution 
she made in the liberation of America. It is just 
possible that a correct estimate of the compara- 
tive contributions of Sweden and France and even 
Germany, would put them in successful compe- 
tition with Ireland as to the part they played in 
the historic conflict. But then, what shall we say 
of England herself? With her usual arrogance 
and presumption she edges her way to the front, 
and points with pride to the men of British blood 
who fought for American freedom. We don 't like 
to do it, but if Ave admit the claim of one we must 
admit the claims of all; and England persists in 
coming out on top, — another instance of her cruel 
oppression and tyranny over Ireland! 

[64] 



THE CHILD AND THE MOON 

In the Revolutionary war, from first to last, 
there was enrolled an army of possibly 250,000 
men. Some say more, some say less. In round 
numbers, 230,000 might be considered a fair esti- 
mate. Of this army, the four then existing New 
England States or Colonies, — New Hampshire, 
Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, 
supplied more than half, — or 120,000. The colon- 
ists of New England at the time of the Revolution, 
were almost exclusively of English or British ex- 
traction. Some were from Ulster, and as such 
were almost as British as any, — certainly far 
enough away from the Sinn Fein type. This gives 
England a good start in the contribution of man 
power which she made on behalf of freedom in 
America. If we add to the 120,000 New Englanders 
the cavaliers of Virginia and the Carolinas and the 
very considerable groups of men from the other 
colonies, whose ancestry was British, we discover 
that the Continental Army must have been English 
in the proportion of at least five or six to one, and 
St. Patrick himself only knows what excessive 
proportion of Englishmen to Irishmen there must 
have been. Thanks to the line of argument which 
defenders and champions of the claims of Ireland 
have suggested, it seems we are compelled to 
admit, that it was Englishmen who licked English- 
men and liberated the Colonies from English rule. 
Perhaps we ought to be grateful to Irish investi- 
gators for bringing to light this interesting fact ; 
for undoubtedly it would have been advantageous 

[65] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

to both America and Great Britain, had both of 
them thought of the war of the American Revo- 
lution as a Civil War, which in truth it really was, 
and that the principles for which the Colonists 
contended, were the Anglo-^axon principles of 
justice and liberty — the common heritage of 
Americans and Englishmen alike. Poor Paddy 
had a part, but a very incidental part, in the 
struggle. He tagged on to the movement in the 
direction of freedom and democracy, — a move- 
ment which he not only did nothing to originate, 
but which originated in the land and among the 
people he insists we ought to hate. This is the 
usual habit of Ireland as represented by her noisy 
and windy champions and defenders. 

In a similar way, the Sinn Fein agitator has 
discovered that the Irish more than any other 
race, saved the Union and freed the slaves in the 
war of the Rebellion. Of course no one for a 
moment would seek to deny or belittle the splen- 
did part played in the Civil War, or in any war 
by men of Irish ancestry; but if Ireland as a 
national entity is to have the credit, then in 
exactly the same way, England should have credit 
for what men of English ancestry accomplished. 
I have read somewhere that 100,000 Canadians 
crossed the border and fought in the Union Army 
during the Civil War. This is probably an over- 
statement, but undoubtedly a good many thous- 
ands did so, and if to the number were added all 
the Americans of Canadian ancestry who marched 

[66] 



THE CHILD AND THE MOON 

under the starry flag, Canada might if she were 
as ambitious and self -centered as Sinn Fein, put 
in a claim for no inconsiderable amount of credit 
for the preservation of the Union. Perhaps it is 
not to be expected that the clamorous propagan- 
dist should in this connection, speak of the forty 
thousand or more Irishmen who fought against 
the Union as units of the Confederate Army, or 
of the like number who nearly wrecked the Union 
cause by resisting the Draft. 

Again we find ourselves travelling over familiar 
ground when we come face to face with the de- 
mands and claims of the spell-binder when he 
points to the large proportion of men of Irish 
lineage who fought in the American armies in 
France, and because of which asks for Ireland 
the credit and the rewards these men worthily 
earned. Of course here again, to follow the Sinn 
Fein mode of argument to its reasonable and logi- 
cal conclusion. Great Britain should have credit 
for all the achievements of the doughboys who 
were descendents of British and Canadian emi- 
grants, from the time of the Mayflower Pilgrims 
until the present moment, and they probably out- 
numbered the descendents of the Irish to a very 
considerable degree. This mode of reasoning 
which the brilliant champions of Ireland insist 
upon following, is I admit, rather hard upon the 
American and gives him little place in fighting 
for his own flag, but then he should have taken 

[67] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

the precaution of making sure that no blood ran 
in his veins save only that of the native Indian. 

Truly Pat insists when the moon gets behind a 
cloud, that he puffed it out with his own breath. 

In this connection it is interesting, not to say 
amusing, to note the presumption with which 
these people assume sometimes the task of speak- 
ing for and representing America. Take for 
example the incident shortly after the war, when 
several hundred of them crossed over to France 
and proceeded to set up a statue of Lafayette in 
Metz, and to thank Marshal Foch for leading 
them to victory in the World War. They pres- 
ented the great Frenchman with a gold baton as 
a token and recognition of his leadership. It was 
a stupendous bluff and a superb bit of playing up 
to the galleries. Something of course had to be 
done to make their attitude right and assure for 
themselves a place in the van as the chiefest of 
all the champions of liberty, for it is hardly too 
much to say that in all probability there was not 
ten men in all the group who did not in the first 
two years of the war, wish and pray and hope 
for the defeat of France and the success of the 
German cause. When Joffre and Foch were setting 
their beleagured forces in array to beat back the 
enemy from the gates of Paris, at the first Battle 
of the Marne, these people were giving their sym- 
pathy and such help as lay in their power in order 
that their efforts might be rendered futile. Childish 
arrogance, you say! Yes, but it is more. When 

[68] 



THE CHILD AND THE MOON 

imposture and treachery and intrigue stalks forth 
in the guise of philanthropy, it is time for other 
folk to hold themselves ready and keep wide 
awake. 

The insistence on the part of Paddy that he is 
the man by whose word and will, the moon waxes 
and wanes, does not always carry implications 
like this. For the most part it simply serves to 
differentiate Pat from the major portion of man- 
kind. 

The chief distinction between the Irishman and 
the Scotchman for instance, is this. The Scotch- 
man quietly assumes the management of every- 
thing within sight. Without saying anything 
about it, he takes over the government of all the 
earth, or all that is worth taking over, and he does 
not greatly care whether the world knows or does 
not know who it is that is running it. The Irish- 
man on the other hand, pours it into the ear of all 
creation and sundry, that he is the chap who does 
things, — that he is the fellow who rules, or would 
be and ought to be, if all the rest of the folk would 
only get out of the way and cease from preventing 
him from assuming the position of superiority 
which he, of all men, is best fitted to assume. 

The hen that cackles the most does not always 
lay the greatest number of eggs. Sometimes the 
rooster does a lot of cackling. The Irislmaan does 
the same. 

I have often wondered why Washington him- 
self has not been claimed for the Irish. This claim 

[69] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

established, and it might easily be done, Ireland 
would be able to silence forever her jealous de- 
tractors, and make good her right to be regarded 
as the originator of democracy and the demo- 
cratic form of government. 

It is true that 'Jarge' suggests English ances- 
try for the Father of His Country ; but Washing- 
ton had a brother named Lawrence, and from 
Lawrence to Larry is only a step. Larry is pure 
Hibernian, and there you have it. A little investi- 
gation would doubtless establish the fact that 
Washington was not an English Gentleman at all, 
but a genuine Paddy from Limerick or the Hill o' 
Houth. True the portraits of Washington rep- 
resent him as having Anglo-Saxon features, and 
he had straight legs ; but little incidental matters 
like these could easily be brushed aside. 

If the Munchausen Triplets from this country 
who recently visited Ireland, would only go over 
again, they could speedily clear up the whole 
question. It would be a much more rewarding 
line of investigation by way of propaganda for 
these famous hyphenates, than to spend time try- 
ing to establish the charge that Johnnie Bull 
tore Pat's trowsers when he arrested him for 
stealing his neighbor 's pig and for setting fire to 
the pig's abode, and it would give Ireland the 
credit that of right belongs to her. That this 
matter has not been attended to long ago is only 
one more evidence of English tyranny and op- 
pression in Ireland. This is indeed a serious 

[70] 



THE CHILD AND THE MOON 

matter and ought to be set right, and coupled with 
it is the insufferable conceit of England in claim- 
ing that her Patron Saint killed a dragon, while 
the Patron Saint of Ireland is given credit for 
nothing bigger than a snake. Ought not this in- 
justice to be attacked and persistently fought 
until it, too, is set right, and the achievements of 
the respective Saints reversed, as they ought to 
be. 

The opportunities for bringing to light the un- 
recognized claims and achievements of Ireland 
are multitudinous and insistent, and we wonder 
why the brilliant advocates and agitators turn 
aside so constantly to quarrel about non-essential 
things. Why should they spend so much of their 
breath trjdng to convince us that green is not red, 
and that the two colors should never appear 
together on the same piece of tartan cloth ? Every- 
body knows that it is an outrage to make tartans 
of any color but green. 



[71] 



CHAPTER VIII 
Peopaganda 

ONE of the most laborious undertakings of 
the Sinn Fein agitator, is the effort he 
makes to establish the claim that the age- 
long struggle in Ireland, is a conflict of democ- 
racy against autocracy, — that the inherent love 
of freedom and democracy which is characteristic 
of Irish thought and spirit, is in perpetual revolt 
against class rule. Painfully and persistently, we 
are informed that the principle at stake in Ireland 
is the principle for which the American Colonists 
contended in the war for Independence. 

With painful and perspiring assiduity, he 
strives night and day to induce a wheel-barrow 
to negotiate the rails and the over-head wire of a 
trolley line, and he becomes mightily peeved if 
we fail to take passage in his omnibus. 

He can not understand why things that melt in 
the same heat or freeze in the same cold, should 
not be of the same nature and composition, or why 
a porous plaster should not serve the same pur- 
pose as a postage stamp, in carrying a letter 
through the mail, seeing that one is as adhesive 
as the other. 

He insists that it is the label that determines 

[72] 



PROPAGANDA 

the contents of a package, and not the contents 
that determine the label. 

He makes toilsome journeys to the shrines of 
American Independence and lays sheaves of 
shamrock, tied with the Kaiser's colors, on Lex- 
ington Green and Concord Bridge, and at the base 
of the monument on Bunker Hill. 

He sings the '' Wearing of the Green" and the 
''Watch on the Rhine" to the tune of the "Star 
Spangled Banner," and wonders why the name 
of New York isn't changed to New Cork, as it 
ought to be. 

When he shoots arrows into the tough hide of 
Johnnie Bull, he does it from the balcony of Inde- 
pendence Hall, Philadelphia, or from the ambush 
of the Liberty Bell. 

Wlien in the early days of the war, he threw his 
arms in tender and fraternal embrace around 
the neck of the Hun, he chose the same old Quaker 
City in which to stage the soul-stirring and 
freedom-teaching drama, in which Paddy and 
Fritz clasped hands in the presence of a host of 
hyphenates, and swore eternal fidelity to those 
principles of democracy which they have always 
held in common. 

This Philadelphia gathering, by the way, in the 
early stages of the war, was surely an occasion 
of historic interest, my son! I wish you could 
have been there, not only to catch the inspiration, 
but to make for yourself a reliable diagnosis of 
the reactions that might have been observed. 

[73] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

Speaking after the manner of the wise men of 
our day and generation, (who are mostly doctors 
and chemists,) the outbreak of the war and the 
attack upon Belgium, was the 'acid test' of the 
democracy of Paddy Fein; and the Philadelphia 
meeting registered with unerring certainty the 
resultant reaction. With cruel and merciless 
logic, the Irish conception of autocracy and dem- 
ocracy, was disclosed to be identical with that 
of the Hun. At the very time when Belgium was 
being crushed under the iron heel of Prussian 
autocracy — when all the world beside was stand- 
ing aghast at the hellish cruelties of autocratic 
lust, these lovers of freedom and democracy 
joined in a demonstration of ardent and outspoken 
sympathy with the perpetrators of these devilish 
things. Hyphenated Americans of different 
breeds, some of them Judges from the bench, who 
disgraced not only the office to which they had 
been elected in a democratic country, but also the 
citizenship to which they had been admitted or into 
which they had been born, — expressed their joy 
and satisfaction over the success of the German 
arms. Fraternal eulogies were pronounced, the 
songs of Ireland and Germany intermingled, and 
banners representing the two countries, inter- 
twined, while at a given signal there marched 
upon the platform from either side, an armed 
and uniformed company of men. One company 
represented the Hun who at that moment was 
raping Belgium, and the other represented Sinn 

[74] 



PROPAGANDA 

Fein, spilling out of his package, and smearing 
the label he had placed upon himself. When the 
leaders of the two groups clasped hands on the 
center of the stage, the symbolism was complete, 
— Irish democracy and Prussian autocracy were 
seen to be one and the same, — inseparable and 
indivisible now and forever more. 

It may mean little or it may mean much, but in 
this connection it is an interesting fact, and pos- 
sibly it is more significant than we think for, that 
the only citizens of the American Republic, who 
claim and appropriate the title of ' Prince ', — who 
demand and have accorded them the homage that 
is supposed to go with the title, are men of Irish 
birth or blood. These men claim, or it is claimed 
for them, that they occupy the position of foreign 
princes of the blood, and that the United States 
government is under obligation to do them honor 
as such, — that they are entitled to honors and 
salutes from the navy of our country in exactly 
the same measure as those given to royal per- 
sonages from abroad, — and further that their 
right of precedence is second only to the President 
of the Nation himself. 

Of course all this is only another way of ex- 
pressing democracy, of the kind Paddy Fein and 
Fritzie Hun approve and support. Perhaps we 
might as well say little or nothing about it, for 
the tag is glued tight upon it, if it is upside down. 
However, when the Sinn Fein orator, in an effort 
to enlarge the letters on the label, protests his 

[75] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

repudiation and detestation of all kings and their 
kind, we can hardly forget that it is not by any 
means an unheard of thing for men of Irish line- 
age, on both sides of the sea, to kiss with becoming 
submission, the hand of a prince. 

Another suggestion presents itself in this con- 
nection with the experience through which the 
world has been passing in recent years. The war 
in its final outcome, has played havoc with 
autocracy, for the time being at least. Autocracies 
have been tumbling from their thrones in all direc- 
tions. AVith the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs 
gone, there are no national autocracies left. A 
lesser breed of autocracies still remains, however ; 
but these may well begin to tremble in their 
shoes, as they evidently are commencing to do, 
— from the boss of a New England hill town or 
chapel, or the ward boss in Boston or New York, 
to the silent, sullen old man who sits on the banks 
of the Tiber, nursing the petulant fiction, that he 
is kept in prison within the four walls of his own 
palace. Of course it is true that the autocrat of 
whatever degree or kind, is always lonely and is 
always a prisoner when he is surrounded by his 
equals. Democracy automatically puts him in 
prison, and as the world moves forward towards 
the democratic ideal, this becomes inevitable. 
There is no escape from the inexorable law. 

This my son, is really the trouble with dear old 
Ireland. The autocratic bent of mind and spirit 
which the agitators label democracy and love of 

[76] 



PROPAGANDA 

freedom, is ever at war against the impact of 
equality of privilege and opportunity. Divine 
right dies hard, whether it is the Divine right of 
prince or priest or Pat, and it is of one texture 
wherever you find it, whether on the Liffey or the 
Tiber or on Charles Eiver, flowing into Boston 
Bay. 

Special privilege is always the enemy of univer- 
sal privilege. It constantly assumes an attitude of 
bitter intolerance and aggression against any en- 
croachment upon its prerogatives or its domain. 
Special privilege, however, is steadily giving way 
to universal privilege, all the world over; but it 
seems likely to survive and keep kicking in Ireland 
till Gabriel 's trumpet blows. 

Has it ever occurred to you my son, that the 
Irish are never pioneers? Paddy has never 
blazed a way through the forest nor made a trail 
across the plain. Multitudes have emigrated from 
the old sod, but never to become pathfinders or 
explorers. Thousands have come from Norway 
and Sweden to America just as thousands have 
come from Ireland; but the Scandinavians in 
large numbers, have pushed on to the frontiers. 
Pat has usually remained in the cities, or in the 
regions already settled or occupied by either the 
farm or the factory. In spite of the wailing moan 
of the agitator to the contrary, Ireland has been 
depopulated in exactly the same way and for the 
same cause, as many a rural town in New Eng- 
land; but the New Englander or his progeny, is 

{77^ 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

to be found at the outposts of civilization. Such 
we do not discover to be the case with the man 
from Erin. 

It is interesting to note the races that have 
been voyagers and explorers on this Continent. 
The Dutch pushed out into the wilderness. The 
French moved on and on, till they found a river, 
and then traced either to its mouth or its source. 
The Spaniard braved the dangers of unknown 
seas and water courses, while Englishmen and 
Scotchmen led the van into the mountains or far 
into the frozen regions of the north. Strange is 
it not, that here again, we discover that neither 
the Prussian nor Pat seem to have taken any 
chances, by pushing into the unknown; moreover 
one can scarcely recall an invention or a discovery 
that has added to the world's wealth or comfort 
in which either of these gentlemen had a share; 
but each of them has a ready faculty for adapting 
and exploiting what others have discovered or 
created. Given a million milleniums, Pat never 
could have founded or built a city like New York ; 
but finding it already built, he could take and 
exploit it to the tune of six or seven million 
dollars a year, if the presentment of a Grand Jury 
in the year 1892, is to be relied upon. 

Perhaps it isn't altogether kind to say it, but 
one is forcibly reminded of the hermit crab when 
he tries to make a study of Pat. The crab never 
builds a shell for himself, and he would not know 
how to do it, if he tried. Finding the cast off shell 

[78] 



PROPAGANDA 

of some fellow creature who has gone to the happy 
hunting ground, the crab backs into it, and makes 
himself at home. He is as happy as a clam and 
as the day is long, ever after. He worries not at 
all over the high cost of living or of rent, and has 
little fear that the Bolsheviki may possibly invade 
his native heath. In like manner Pat finds the 
shell of some fellow creature, who has not indeed, 
migrated to the realms of bliss, but who has gone 
on a yachting trip, or is too busy sawing wood 
to keep the home fires burning, greatly to care who 
occupies the ingle-nook, when the hearth begins 
to glow. So he wakes up some fine morning to 
discover that Pat has backed himself into the shell 
and has taken possession. 

Whether this rather distinctive and interesting 
characteristic has any bearing upon the situation 
when Paddy puts on the war-paint of Sinn Fein, 
I do not pretend to say ; but the propagandist and 
agitator is ever setting forth the Irishman as one 
who looks backward, and not forward. He takes 
him out of the stream of evolution and progress, 
and compels him to shiver and complain on the 
bank, while all the rest of the universe rolls on- 
ward to the goal. For him the golden age is in 
the past, and he not only insists for himself, but 
for everybody else, that the race must retrace its 
steps or it is doomed. If he would insist pleas- 
antly we wouldn't mind, but when he brandishes 
the tomahawk and the war-club, we have mis- 
givings. 

[79] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

This backward looking attitude is seen in the 
wild efforts that are being made to resurrect and 
resuscitate the ancient Keltic language of Ire- 
land; and in the hope that some day it will be 
said and sung in all the valleys and on all the 
hill-tops in the land. The English language has 
been the vehicle of democracy, and that is per- 
haps the chief reason why Sinn Fein would have 
it displaced. English speech has carried parlia- 
ments and parliamentary usage to the ends of the 
earth, and that is why it should be suppressed in 
Ireland. 

We are told that the Irish Gaelic is a sister 
language to Latin and Greek, and this I dare not 
deny; but why one sister in the trio of graces, 
should escape the application of the law of evolu- 
tion and progress, I am at a loss to understand. 
I suppose, like so many things in Ireland, it is a 
law unto itself. Nor can I understand why the 
ancient Hebrew is left out of the argument, for 
my Highland Scotch friend tells me that his Gaelic 
is possessed of many points and characteristics 
that suggest a kinship with the Hebrew. I am 
told that the Hebrew language reads and is writ- 
ten from right to left, instead of the opposite 
direction, as is the case with modern forms of 
expression. This would seem would it not, to be 
the natural method when men first assayed the 
task? I do not know whether the ancient Irish 
follows this course. Judging from the antics of 
the members of the parliament of the late lamented 

[80] 



PKOPAGANDA 

*' Republic," I should say it is written in circles 
or spirals and not in straight lines at all. Be that 
as it may, it is quite evident that these languages 
are primitive, and belong to the early stages of 
human civilization. Indeed my Scotch friend 
Sandy, insists that his Gaelic is the language in 
which Adam and Eve enjoyed their first court- 
ship in Eden; but there is a twinkle in his eye 
that indicates his appreciation of the humor of 
the assumption. If Paddy Fein put forth a sim- 
ilar claim, he would do it with every hair sticking 
straight 'up ready to fight anybody who would dare 
to dispute, — or who would suggest that he might 
be a little more companionable to the rest of the 
human race, if he would wallv with his face looking 
forward and not backward. 

Paddy! Paddy! Paddy McFein! For the 
love of Mike, will you not go to school for a few 
weeks to Sandy McNab and learn to laugh at the 
agitators who crawl backward like a crab and 
want you to do the same. 

1 have an idea my son, that the woes of Ireland 
could be cured if a laughing propaganda could be 
inaugurated and pressed in the Emerald Isle. I 
would send over a band of genial men, whose sole 
occupation for ten or twenty years, would be to 
teach the Irish people to laugh at themselves and 
their foibles ; and if the Society for the prevention 
of cruelty to animals didn 't get after me, I would 
take over the celebrated Munchausen Triplets 
from this country, and compel them to travel 

[8i] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

incessantly, from one end of the land to the other, 
in order that the good Irish folk would have a 
concrete object to practice upon. 

T feel satisfied that if this thing could be done, 
a score of years would not have rolled by, before 
Sinn Fein would have had decent burial, and 
Paddy would need no label with letters a mile 
high, to proclaim the era and the class to which he 
belongs. 



r82l 



CHAPTER IX 

Admissions and Contbadictions 

THE frantic and hysterical propaganda of 
hate which the Sinn Fein people have been 
engaged in, ought in the long run, to have 
a certain educational value, and probably will 
have. It is bound to defeat its own purpose by 
its virulent excesses. Its stupid and petulant 
exaggerations not only lose their force and cease 
to have any convincing power, but increasingly 
have a tendency to discredit the cause they seek 
to advance. The animus and malevolence that 
lies back of this campaign, disgusts thoughtful 
and intelligent people, and clears the way for an 
unprejudiced and reasonable appreciation and 
understanding of the whole problem. The spirit 
and character of the agitation and the agitators, 
are all the while being disclosed, and the contra- 
dictions and admissions into which they are for- 
ever floundering, let in the light better than any 
counter propaganda could do. 

As already intimated, the predilection and bent 
of mind of the Irish, was well illustrated when 
Germany with a mailed fist, spiked and riveted, 
struck civilization full in the face. I speak of 
course, of that noisy and combustible part of the 

[83] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

race on either side of the ocean, that insists it has 
the right to speak for the whole. We must remem- 
ber and recognize the two hundred thousand loyal 
Irishmen from the north, who fought the brutal 
autocracy of the Prussian, with a valor and a 
steadfastness unsurpassed by the soldiers of any 
army, and who disown and repudiate Sinn Feiners 
as traitors to freedom and democracy, as strongly 
as loyal Englishmen or loyal Americans do. These 
splendid sons of the Emerald Isle live and fight 
and die for democracy, while their traitorous 
countrymen in both hemispheres only vapor and 
mouth about it, and put forth laughable and pre- 
posterous pretentions, which in spirit and in prac- 
tice they constantly contradict, while uncon- 
sciously proclaiming themselves domineering 
autocrats in every fibre of their being. It was 
this spirit that automatically placed them in the 
camp of the Hun. The two were made to travel 
in the same team, and Paddy Fein can no more 
talk himself away from it than he can camouflage 
the twist of his tongue, at any rate not until one 
or the other treads on his yokefellow's toes. 

Perhaps it is this effort to claim an interest 
and an attitude of mind that is entirely foreign 
to his nature, that leads the Sinn Fein agitator to 
make the admissions and contradictions into 
which, inadvertently, he falls. As the exigencies 
of debate require, the one set of circumstances 
produce diametrically opposite results, and two 
or more facts or circumstances that are hostile to 

[84] 



ADMISSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS 

one another and mutually exclusive, contribute to 
establish one and the same proposition. Of course 
the one outstanding proposition to be demon- 
strated and maintained is that England has been 
the sole and only cause of Ireland's difficulties and 
woes. Always and everywhere it is the same old 
unreasonable spirit against which the parable 
makes remonstrance: *'We have piped unto you 
and ye have not danced, we have mourned and 
ye have not lamented." If the British Parlia- 
ment, which, of course has always included Irish 
representatives in equal proportion, encouraged 
and developed some agricultural possibility of the 
island until the result was abundance and pros- 
perity, it was in order that England might enrich 
herself at Ireland's expense, and so that her manu- 
facturing industries might be discouraged and 
suppressed in the interest of English factories. 
If some manufacturing industry was encouraged 
by the tariff laws of the Empire, and British 
capital added to Irish capital made it a success, 
then it was done that the coal barons of England 
might grow rich at Ireland's expense, while seeing 
to it that the Irish coal deposits are left unde- 
veloped. 

When Railroads are built in order to enable 
the Irish farmer to get his produce to market, it 
is in order to get the natural wealth out of his 
country, away from him and out of the land, while 
at the same time and on the other hand, the Rail- 
road management steers the lines as far away 

[8s] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

from the coal and mineral deposits as possible lest 
Irish coal should compete with English coal. 

If the potato crop is abundant, England gets 
rich on it, and she encouraged the planting of 
potatoes for that express purpose. If a blight 
strikes it and suffering and famine ensue, Eng- 
land did not indeed send the blight, though to 
hear some of the spell-binders you would think 
she did ; but she is to blame for leading Pat to put 
all his eggs into one basket, and when that basket 
gets smashed he has nothing to fall back upon to 
keep the wolf from the door. 

England is keeping Ireland in poverty and pri- 
vation, we are told in one breath and in the next, 
in order to show the natural wealth of the country, 
in spite of English oppression, we are informed 
that the trade between Ireland and Great Britain 
bulks larger than that between Great Britain and 
any other country with the single exception of the 
United States. It isn't kind of the U. S. A. to do 
more to make England rich than Ireland does. 

Do these agitators think that all the Irish are 
fools'? Is it necessary to tell Pat that if John 
Bull doesn 't stand by and tell him when and where 
to plant a hill of beans, he isn't giving him a fair 
chance, and if he does so advise him, then he is 
interfering with his freedom ? 

The Englishman found his coal and dug into the 
earth to get it, and then he built a Railway to carry 
it where he wanted it. Is the Irishman any less 
intelligent and enterprising? These demagogues 

[86] 



ADMISSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS 

and agitators keep insinuating that he is far less 
so. The Englishman, the Scotchman and the 
American decide whether they will plant potatoes 
or oats or sweet corn, — any or all of these, or 
whether they will discard all and build a cider 
mill and go into the manufacturing business. 
Sometimes these fellows are wise and right in 
their decisions and sometimes they are dead 
wrong, but they take their chances; and not one 
of them has any more freedom to do as he likes 
than Pat has. Is Pat any less independent and 
wide-awake? These spell-binders are forever in- 
sulting the Irishman by saying and insinuating 
that he is. They try to make out that Pat is a 
helpless baby, which is not true by any manner of 
means. One would think that the next time a 
hyphenated delegation goes over from this coun- 
try, all Ireland would rise in anger and ride its 
membership out of the land on a rail, and tell 
them to go back where they belong and stay there. 
God save Ireland from her friends ! 

Here is one of these champions of Ireland's 
cause, presumably a leading one, for he has writ- 
ten a book heralded far and near as one of the 
strongest appeals on behalf of the Sinn Fein point 
of view. In this ardent defence of Ireland and 
attack upon England, we are told why the 
''revolution" of 1916 failed in the attainment of 
its purpose in setting Ireland free. The day set 
apart for the outbreak was Easter Sunday, but 
as in the past, something went wrong. It was the 

[871 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

old tragedy of blunders, divided purposes and 
conflicting orders. The game was played out to 
the bitter end as it had always been, with divided 
counsels and a divided command. All this is the 
fullest possible admission of the fundamental con- 
tention of the British Government, and of the 
conviction arrived at by thoughtful and unpreju- 
diced students of the problem, namely, that the 
chief difficulty in the whole matter centers in Ire- 
land and not in England, — in the failure of the 
Irish to come to some reasonable agreement among 
themselves. Surely England was not to blame 
for these blunders and cross-purposes that per- 
sisted to the bitter end. The Unionists of Ulster 
can not have this tragedy laid to their charge. 
Even the Nationalists must be acquitted of all 
blame for the sad and disastrous outcome. 

No defence of England's position could have, 
put forth a more convincing argument than is 
embodied in these statements. Surely these ad- 
missions proclaim that the woes of Ireland spring 
from the absolute inability of the Irish to unite 
on any policy, or to stay united long enough to 
carry it into effect. Morover the age-long tragedy 
was re-enacted at Easter, 1916, not because the 
recognized age-long factions were pulling against 
one another on this occasion, but because a sup- 
posedly united faction developed within itself 
these counter-orders and cross-purposes that 
wrecked the enterprise. Too bad ! Too bad ! One 
can not but sympathize with the champions who 

[88] 



ADMISSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS 

arrive at the mournful but inevitable conclusion. 

This is an example of the way these agitators 
contradict themselves and one another, and for- 
ever keep making admissions that give away their 
whole case. One moment we are told that the insu- 
lar character of Ireland and the almost total diver- 
gence of its Geology from that of England, 
proclaims the fact that nature intended them to be 
two separate nations, next moment we are given 
the interesting information, that the proximity of 
the two islands makes it certain that the great 
coal fields of Britain must assuredly be duplicated 
in Ireland, and of course England with cruel and 
reckless selfishness, is preventing their develop- 
ment. One wonders why England exploits the 
agricultural wealth of Ireland, and yet stupidly 
fails to exploit the superior wealth of the island, 
as represented in her mineral deposits. 

The Peck-sniffian President of a Peck-sniffian 
Republic who honored our country with his pres- 
ence for a time, denounced the people of Ulster 
for standing out against the rest of Ireland in the 
matter of separation from the Empire. Minorities 
should be reasonable, we are told, and so indeed 
they should. This is exactly what most folks who 
have looked into the matter, think of Ireland as 
a whole. If the minority of one in four which 
constitutes the Ulsterites is expected to be reason- 
able, why should not the one in ten of the popu- 
lation of Great Britain and Ireland, or the one in 
one hundred of the whole Empire, be expected to 

[89] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

manifest a similar reasonableness. If the one in 
ten or the one in one hundred want to be by them- 
selves, and want to revert to a tribal state of civil- 
ization, why can't they go off without insisting 
upon dragging out of the family any of the others 
who are contented and happy to remain by the 
old fireside ? Moreover, why can 't they go off and 
set up quietly for themselves without developing 
within their own little circle the age-long 
blunders, the contradictory purposes and the petty 
antagonisms that play the game out to the bitter 
end. This however I presume is inevitable, and 
can not be helped, when the backward march is 
begun and insisted upon. The upward progress 
of civilization is marked by the elimination and 
amalgamation of tribes and it is natural that the 
reversion to type should mean the multiplication 
of tribes, and this all unconsciously perhaps, Sinn 
Fein is bound to achieve if it only can. 

We are told that the government of Ireland by 
England has been a cruel and tragic failure for 
centuries. In the first place it is well to remember 
that it isn 't England, but the Parliament of Great 
Britain and Ireland that has governed Ireland, — 
or misgoverned it if you like the term better. 
Granted for the sake of argument, that the latter 
proposition is true, then we are face to face with 
the fact that one of the marvels of all history is 
that this same government has been a remarkable 
success in every land, and among almost every 
race of people under the sun. The one and only 

[90] 



ADMISSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS 

exception is Ireland. Surely we are forced by this 
consideration to look for the difficulty not in Eng- 
land, but in Ireland. 

Every imaginable and legitimate grievance hav- 
ing been redressed long since, the agitators are 
compelled to manufacture new ones or expatiate 
on ancient ones, as if they were still alive. We 
are told for instance, that the forcing of a state 
church on Ireland, and the collection of tithes for 
its support, constitutes a grievous wrong upon 
the Irish people, the majority of whom are of a 
different faith. We have no quarrel whatever 
with the statement. But there has been no state 
church in Ireland, and no tithes collected on be- 
half of any state church, for more than half a 
century. Moreover the most interesting and sig- 
nificant fact in connection with the matter, is that 
it v/as not the Irish, but the Non-conformist citi- 
zens of England that secured this reform. With 
pen and voice and vote they compelled the govern- 
ment of the day to redress this wrong; and from 
that day to this. Irishmen of the Sinn Fein type 
have given no sign of appreciation or gratitude, 
but have gone on complaining and whining and 
snarling at the heels of their benefactors. In this 
particular matter, the chief difficulty centers in 
the fact that while the Non-conformists of Eng- 
land opposed a state church on principle, — as 
much for themselves as for anybody else, the Irish 
simply wanted to substitute one state church for 
another. 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

Again we hear much about the disabilities under 
which Roman Catholics in Ireland have labored 
because of laws discriminating against them on 
account of their faith. To have their civil rights 
taken away from them on this score, to be sure is 
a grievous wrong, and a wrong that is not miti- 
gated in any way by the fact that their co-religion- 
ists in England suffered in a similar way. This 
latter fact does, however, tells us that there was no 
discrimination against Ireland. Moreover while it 
does not justify, it may explain the existence of 
these oppressive laws, to know that in the days of 
their enactment, the very foundations of free 
parliamentary government, were threatened and 
in great danger of being undermined and over- 
thrown ; and the statesmanship of the time seemed 
unable to devise any other safe-guard. Perhaps 
for the time there was no other. However that 
maj'' be, is it not petulantly childish on the part of 
demagogues and agitators, — not to say anything 
of the unreason and dishonesty of it, — to go on 
raving against this ancient wrong and constantly 
implying that it still presses upon the people of 
Ireland? It is nearly one hundred years since 
this repressive legislation was repealed. For 
almost a century the Roman Catholics of Ireland 
have enjoyed absolute equality before the law, 
with their Protestant neighbors. It surely shows 
the difficulties encountered in discovering a pres- 
ent day grievance to complain of and denounce, 
when the champions of Ireland are compelled to 

[92] 



ADMISSIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS 

go on setting up and knocking down over and over 
again this man of straw. 

Of course, all of us, — Anglo-Saxon, Irish, 
American, — have grievances against our forbears 
for putting debtors in prison, and for making it 
hot for poor old women accused of witchcraft; 
but it is hardly worth while to start a revolution 
or go to war over the matter at this late date. 

Once more and in like manner, our Sinn Fein 
orators perspire and grow red in the face until 
threatened with apoplexy, as they denounce 
England for her tariff enactments and navigation 
laws which discriminate against Irish industry 
and Irish commerce. I suppose it constitutes a 
crime on the part of England that she did not dis- 
cover centuries ago and put into practice the prin- 
ciples of Free Trade. It is indeed a dark blot on 
the pages of her history that she failed in this 
thing. It is only seventy years or there-abouts 
since England abolished all tariff laws and re- 
pealed all navigation enactments that hampered 
Ireland's commerce; and seventy years form only 
a drop in the bucket of a nation 's history. England 
should have repealed these laws a thousand years 
ago, but even then it would not have saved her 
from criticism and denunciation now ; for Ireland 
has not been able to enjoy through these three 
score and ten years, the absolute freedom of trade 
and navigation between the two Islands and the 
world, secured to her by Great Britain, because 
she had to remember and fret over the ancient 

[931 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

years in which little of that freedom existed for 
anybody. It is facts like these that make vital and 
forceful the clamorous appeals of agitators and 
demagogues. No wonder they feel that the world 
should suspend and interdict all its activities for 
a time, in order that it may gaze with horror and 
amazement upon wrongs and grievances as ap- 
palling as these. 



[94] 



CHAPTER X 

Sinn Fein and the Senate 

YES, I think you are right my son. There 
does seem to be some points of resemblance 
between the U. S. Senate and the Irishman. 
One of the sad misfortunes that dogs the steps 
of Paddy Fein, is that he seems everlastingly ap- 
prehensive lest somebody is going to put some- 
thing over on him. He seems to take it for granted 
that all persons within sight, as well as some 
that are out of sight, are waiting to take advan- 
tage of him. He is suspicious and distrustful, 
and ever on the alert to resent some real or fancied 
attack upon his rights. It has been said that he 
carries a chip on his shoulder. I doubt however 
if this is true. At best I fancy, it is only a half 
truth, and fails to explain fully or in a satisfactory 
way, this striking characteristic of the man from 
the Emerald Isle. Possibly the attitude is less 
an aggressive one, and much more a posture of 
defence, than the world has generally supposed it 
to be. It may be that it is indirectly and not 
otherwise, that he invites a scrap. The child-like, 
or rather perhaps I should say, the childish nature 
which makes him petulant and peevish and 

[95] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

unreasoning, develops in time, into a disposition 
abnormally suspicious. It is this that makes him 
something of a marplot in every factory and shop 
from Maine to California. Ask any factory boss 
or superintendent who has under his direction 
men of different nationalities, who are the people 
hardest to get along with ; and I '11 wager my cow 
against your cat, that nine times out of ten, the 
answer will be that a certain class of Irish are the 
most impossible of all. They are the chief kickers, 
not because they are independent, but because 
they lack independence. Childishly irritable, 
they are ever afraid somebody is going to take 
them unawares. Accustomed in some way, to look 
upon every bargain and trade as a one-sided 
affair, where if one party profits, the other is 
bound to lose, Paddy seems obsessed with the idea 
that everybody is trying to jockey him into a posi- 
tion, where the short end of the transaction is 
sure to be his portion. 

Singularly enough, this seemed to be the atti- 
tude of some of the members of our House of 
Lords at Washington in their fight against Presi- 
dent Wilson and the League of Nations. 

Many of us are inclined to resent the implica- 
tion that this Great Nation is a babe in the woods, 
with all kinds of wild things leering and grinning 
at us from behind every tree trunk. 

We don't like to think we are afraid to venture 
with our Limousine out upon the world's high-way 
for fear some saucy little Ford will spatter us 

[96] 



SINN FEIN AND THE SENATE 

with mud or rub some of the varnish off. We hate 
to be made to refuse to play the game for fear 
somebody takes advantage of us; and we hardly 
relish the imputation that we won 't go to the pic- 
nic because we feel sure all the rest of the kids 
want us to be there, so they can get a chunk of our 
pie. Really, my boy, if we are in such danger of 
getting our immaculate wings soiled, as some of 
our togo-clad advisers seem to think, is it not time 
we began to preen our white feathers, preparatory 
to flight into some far-away realm, where the 
wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at 
rest? 

If all the rest of the fellows are nothing but a 
pack of crooks trying to stack the cards or load 
the dice against us, would it not be well to put 
up the shutters in our shop windows at once, and 
turn the Capitol at Washington into a Temple with 
a shrine and an altar, on which to offer incense 
and adoration, to Mary Baker Eddy, the female 
deity of the Back Bay and the New Hampshire 
Hills ? In this way we could at least, escape con- 
tamination, for we could demonstrate either our- 
selves or the rest of the world out of existence, 
and as it seems at this distance, it would not 
greatly matter which. 

It is indeed too bad that the President should 
have tried to induce a timid, shrinking and de- 
fenceless maiden like our beloved land, to step 
into a cage among a lot of treacherous carnivora, 
just to get glory to himself, by showing how he 

[97] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

could hold the blood-thirsty brutes with his hyp- 
notic eye. 

But this is by no means the worst of it. Phy- 
sical alarm and nervous tension induced by fear 
of bodily or material hurt, are very little things 
compared with the mental anguish into which the 
Senate was thrown, in presence of the imminent 
danger that the simplicity of our democracy 
might be debauched and corrupted out of all sem- 
blance to the comely dream which our fathers 
entertained. 

I wondered at the time why a commission was 
not appointed to examine the President 's baggage 
on his return from Paris, to determine whether 
or not it was true that he had brought over a 
whole trunkful of crowns and coronets, picked up 
in the pawn shops of Europe; and with which it 
was his purpose to reward his followers, when 
his ambitions as dictator had been realized. I 
venture a bet too, that he had already engaged 
three or four of the most impecunious dukes and 
grand dukes of the central empires, to come over 
here when all the smoke of the war had been blown 
away, in order that they might teach the Senate 
how this particular kind of head-gear ought to 
be worn. Moreover it is a safe proposition to sug- 
gest that a number of your Western Senators to- 
gether perhaps, with one or two down this way, 
might be induced to vote as they ought, provided 
they could have their pick from the contents of 
that trunk. Of course it goes without saying that 

[98] 



SINN FEIN AND THE SENATE 

some of our blue-blooded Eastern Legislators 
would not wear a second-hand coronet if it was 
filled with sovereigns as a reward. Nothing short 
of new and made-to-order diadem could ever be 
permitted to adorn their brow. Your Western 
Pro-consuls are less particular. 

Even though the Treaty was not ratified nor 
the League of Nations endorsed, the bitter and 
prolonged discussion was not without its value, 
for the principles involved in this historic debate 
are principles that constantly obtrude in all leg- 
islative action in a democratic country such as 
ours. 

I had hoped to see emerge from the room of the 
Foreign Relations Committee, a stiff and drastic 
amendment providing for the recognition and per- 
petual maintenance of the right of Self Determin- 
ation for the Senate of the United States of 
America. The opportunity ought not to have 
been permitted to slip by, without making every 
possible effort to secure and assure the contin- 
uance of the independence of this, one of the 
greatest law-making bodies in the world. 

You will remember that when Sergeant Paddy 
Fein twirled his swagger stick and gave the com- 
mand, — "Eyes Forninst" — the Senate clicked 
its heels and came to the salute quicker than the 
Prussian Guard ever did ; and it passed with mili- 
tary promptitude a beautiful resolution to which 
Paddy gave gracious and unanimous approval. 
With becoming deference and respect, the Senate 

[99] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

in well-chosen words and with hand held steadily 
at salute, expressed the rare pleasure it gave to 
request that the Hibernian friends of the Kaiser, 
should have an honored place at the Peace Con- 
ference in Paris. The Senate Chamber echoed 
with oratory of which the following sentence may 
serve for substance and type ; — ^' We have always 
desired as a Nation that all people should go on 
peacefully under a government of their own 
choice." 

One wonders if these eloquent Solons ever 
heard of a people as numerous as the Irish and 
occupying a territory more than twenty times as 
great, who wished to go on peacefully under a 
government of their own choice, and the United 
States of America waged a bitter and determined 
war of four years' duration, to prevent any such 
thing. What doughty champions of the Con- 
federacy some of these brilliant statesmen of our 
day would have been ! Presumably most of them 
were still in the kindergarten, possibly some of 
them had not reached that point in their educa- 
tional career at the time the Civil war was in 
progress; but why they should have remained 
stationary at that stage all these years, it would 
take more than the perspicacity and acumen of a 
Pittsburg lawyer to elucidate and explain. 

Of course when votes and not liberties are at 
stake, large allowance has to be made because of 
the emergency of the case ; and when a Presiden- 
tial bee begins to make its nest in somebody's 

[lOO] 



SINN FEIN AND THE SENATE 

bonnet, self-determination isn't likely to be the 
first tiling a politician thinks about; and besides 
if he gets bitten with some kind of a hyphenated 
bug, I doubt if even you my friend, know of any 
antitoxin that will counteract the virus or render 
the victim immune. 

Speaking with all gravtiy, we are not a little 
concerned these days, over the hyphenated citi- 
zen in our midst. President Wilson himself never 
uttered a truer sentiment than when he said that 
the man who carries a hyphen about with him, is 
an enemy of the Republic. But who is it that is 
chiefly to blame for the perpetuation of the 
hyphen? Is it not the party politician? He has 
petted and coddled and humored the hyphened 
voter, till he has become convinced that a hyphen 
is one of the most valued and precious commodi- 
ties any citizen of this nation can possess. We 
have ourselves to blame if the hyphenated citizen 
has become arrogant and a dictatorial nuisance 
in our land. To please him, we have thrown bricks 
and dead cats at the targets he has set up, and 
now he tells us we are afraid of him, and I guess 
he is right. The tragedy and the menace of the 
hyphen is that it is home-made, and is here to 
stay. 

We have wished that dilatory old England 
would settle the Irish problem, and we have cared 
less than a continental, how, if she would only do 
it, so the thing would be eliminated from Ameri- 
can politics ; but it is a vain wish. We might as 

[lOl] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

well cry for the moon. In the first place we forget 
that we have done much to make the task of 
England an all but impossible one; and in the 
second place we fail to realize that the question 
settled on the other side of the sea, would not 
settle it on this. Home Eule or no Home Rule, — 
Republic or no Republic, on the old sod, we would 
still have a hyphen to reckon with here; and for 
that favor we can chiefly bestow our thanks upon 
ourselves. 

It is the mixing up of all this miserable spite 
and unreason, with a great International Question, 
like the Treaty of Peace and the League of 
Nations, that disgusts so many thoughtful 
American citizens. Of course it would never do 
to permit the President to have the credit for 
negotiating a World Peace and a World League. 
Of course that would put him in line with the two 
outstanding figures in the nation's history, and 
the world's advance towards the democratic ideal; 
and that would never do. Washington, — Lincoln, 
— Wilson, — would not look well in jaundiced 
eyes, so any weapon is good enough to use. How- 
ever if party interests do demand that the Presi- 
dent should be sat upon, why can not the matter 
be debated and accomplished without casting 
slurs and affronts in the face of nations and 
peoples who have been our loyal and splendid 
Allies, through a terrible war, and who most of 
them have made sacrifices which in the nature of 

[102] 



SINN FEIN AND THE SENATE 

the case, we have not been called upon to make? 
Have we no generosity ? 

We were told that we had our Allies at our 
mercy and that we could dictate our terms as to 
the Treaty and the League, and these sentiments 
were applauded as an evidence of supreme states- 
manship. To some of us poor mortals, after we 
as a nation had an equal voice at the peace table, 
it seems not only the grossest selfishness and in- 
gratitude, but at the same time has the effect of 
placing the good old U. S. A. in the position of 
asking for special privileges. Are we not big 
enough and dignified enough, to stand squarely 
on the same footing with all the rest of the folk 
in the game? 

We had one of these Solonesque orators telling 
us that our nation was the only solvent, going 
concern on the top of the earth, and that we ought 
to beware of entering into a partnership with a 
lot of bankrupt countries. Are we such a feeble, 
spineless folk that we need that kind of Senatorial 
piffle to put backbone into our Americanism and 
punch into our patriotism? Does the school-boy 
politician not know that at the very time he was 
speaking, the Bankers of the world were rating 
the four chief bankrupts in about the same class 
with ourselves, and in some instances their securi- 
ties had a higher rating than ours in the markets 
of the world? Did he not know that while he was 
speaking, England with leaps and bounds and in 
a perfectly legitimate way, was recapturing the 

[103] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

world's trade ? No sooner had the Armistice been 
signed, than England began reaching out with 
marvelous success in the direction of securing 
and maintaining her old supremacy. Trade ex- 
ports at the time, were showing a gain of more 
than a hundred million a month. An amazing 
position for a bankrupt nation to be in ! 

If instead of chasing after a six to one vote in 
the League where it does not exist, some of the 
ferret-like scrutiny had turned its gaze upon the 
six to one body of common sense and business 
sagacity that Great Britain seems to exercise in 
her commercial relations with the rest of the 
world, some of these legislators of ours would 
have been doing their country a better service. 

The day has gone by when bigness is disclosed 
and enhanced by distrust and abuse of other 
nations. It may be that we need the rest of the 
world almost as much as the rest of the world 
needs us ; and it might be good business as well as 
good manners not to turn up our noses too high, 
when we are invited to drink a friendly cup of tea 
with the rest of the folks, even if they don't live 
on Fifth Avenue or on Eiverside Drive. 



[104] 



CHAPTER XI 

John Bull and Uncle Sam 

THE reapproachment of America and Great 
Britain, and the more intelligent and gen- 
erous understanding of one country by the 
other, that constitutes one of the bi-products of 
the war, has been accompanied by a recrudescence 
of a particularly virulent type of Anglophobia in 
our midst. 

That John Bull and Uncle Sam should be seen 
out walking together arm in arm, while it has 
been a source of gratification to many people, has 
been to others something like the proverbial red 
rag to a bull. 

The well-organized and well-timed propaganda 
of hate, pushed by the professional spite-mongers, 
doubtless has had much to do with this thing ; but 
one is rather surprised to discover that even with 
that bellows to do the blowing, so much of the dead 
ashes of generations ago could have been fanned 
into a flame. 

Many are the causes no doubt, that have con- 
tributed to this result, but it is evident that the 
itch of party politics at Washington, localized at 
first, has been scratched until large sections of 

[105] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

hitherto apparently healthy epidermus have been 
infected and inflamed; and with their cuticle on 
fire men have run amuck in an effort to escape 
from the irritation and to account for their dis- 
tress, and have spread the contagion far and 
near. 

The other night I ran across a man far out in 
a country place, who was raw all over, and he came 
at me like an angry canine tormented by a million 
fleas. I had never spoken a word to this man nor 
in his hearing, that could have given him any clue 
as to my feeling towards President Wilson or the 
League of Nations. There is no imaginable way 
in which he could have known how or in what 
direction my sympathies lay save that I sometimes 
try to look intelligent, and it may be that possibly 
I succeeded better than common on that occasion. 
Anyway he batted me all over the ring until I was 
groggy and hanging on to the ropes. Golly! I 
thought he was going to eat me up, suspenders 
and all. '^ Didn't I know this and didn't I know 
that?" ''Isn't it true this and isn't it true that?" 
The whole panorama of History and Geography 
was laid before me from the time of the Boston 
Tea Party to the recent guzzling of that self-same 
beverage at Bucking;ham Palace and Downing 
Street. Wilson thought he was something of a 
diplomat until Lloyd-George and Clemenceau got 
hold of him, and when they were through with 
liim, lie looked like a pair of ancient galluses with 
the buckles broken off. Modestly and meekly I 

[io6] 



JOHN BULL AND UNCLE SAM 

tried to assure the man that I didn't bring up the 
President nor place him in the White House, and 
that I had never seen Clemenceau nor Mr. Lloyd- 
George. It was no use. It seemed like rubbing 
red pepper into the excoriated integument. I 
withdrew from the field of action, to adjust my 
collar and to take off a necktie imported from 
Picadilly during the war. 

Well, it is all very interesting and very funny, 
my boy ! But it has sent a lot of us to investigate 
afresh the basis of our prejudices, to examine 
from a new angle our histories, together with the 
passing national and international movements of 
recent generations as well as of our day; and to 
study the portly carriage of John Bull from a 
closer and more intimate vantage point than we 
have ever ventured or cared to do it before. One 
thing I think, we have discovered beyond the pos- 
sibility of dispute is that the tenant of the tight 
little Island beyond the sea, is neither angel nor 
devil, but human — intensely* and interestingly 
human, and that in spite of all preconceptions to 
the contrary, there is much that is likeable about 
the old fellow after all. Furthermore, not only 
has our liking grown with our study but with a 
fuller and better realization and understanding of 
the kind of enemies he has made, for it is certain 
that many of the criticisms and adverse judg- 
ments passed upon England, rightly appraised 
are seen to be to her credit rather than otherwise. 

A prominent German is reported to have said 

[107] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

to a distinguished Englishman long before the 
war, — ''You Englishmen talk about justice and 
humanity, — we Germans think you are a set of 
damned fools," and it was a German who re- 
marked, — ''A German can never become a gentle- 
man, and an Englishman can never be anything 
but a fool. ' ' There is much philosophy and much 
truth in these statements, and the truth strikes 
deeper into the heart of things, than the formu- 
lated expression at first thought would seem to 
indicate. To the German mind there is a higher 
law than the law of humanity and justice, and 
that is the law of self interest ; and what grieves 
the Teuton and makes him impatient and angry 
with his neighbor on the other side of the North 
Sea, is not only that he holds an opposite theory, 
but is ever upsetting the orderly and logical 
course of things by trying to put that theory into 
practice. And what is most exasperating of all, 
by some strange fate, he seems to make a success 
of things and in nine cases out of ten, comes out 
on top in the end. That self interest in the long 
run, should lie in the line of doing unto others 
as you would have others do to you, is all very 
well, but it is slow and idiotic when you have a 
chance to do something else and something bigger. 
To possess the power to exploit and yet to fail 
to exploit is to play the fool, and to muddle 
through on that principle is to proclaim one's 
self a prince among fools. It is this muddling 
through and on the level, when he has such con« 

[io8] 



JOHN BULL AND UNCLE SAM 

spicuous opportunities to do otherwise, that above 
everything else, constitutes the Englishman a fool. 
To tell the truth, one is in a quandary sometimes 
as to whether this course may not lead close to 
the boundary line of fool-dom now and again. We 
rather admire a great Mastiff or Newfoundlander 
stalking nonchalantly among a yardful of little 
tikes barking and biting at his heels, but we would 
like to see him, once in a while send one of them 
yelping home with his tail between his legs, if 
only to give us a chance to clap our hands and 
say, — 'It serves you right.' Some of us who are 
disposed to be friendly and sympathetic towards 
John Bull, have a wicked streak in us, and we 
sometimes think, deserve a little consideration at 
his hands. 

For instance, when our precious Munchausen 
Triplets came back from Ireland, their baggage 
bulging out with made-to-order atrocities, John 
Bull for a time, declined to deny their preposter- 
ous charges, saying, — ''only those who want to 
believe such things will pay any attention to them 
at all." Dog on it ! Is the old man in his dotage, 
in that he doesn't know that there are several 
million people scattered about this old planet, 
who are jealous enough and petty enough to 
believe any lie that anybody likes to put in cir- 
culation about him? 

We think too, John might have dropped a few 
bombs on German fishing villages and watering 
places, just to let Fritzie know how it tasted, 

[109] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

especially when this same Fritzie was calling him 
a fool because he didn't do it. 

Then again we think he might have let us take 
a look at some of his own achievements as the 
war went on. We had to send our men over to 
France to find out what he was doing and then 
crack even a Yankee vocabulary in trying to des- 
cribe what they saw. It would have cheered us 
in some of the dark days, if he had done a little 
bragging; but that is not John's way, and that it 
isn't is one of the things that helps the Teuton 
to make up his mind that John is a fool. Perhaps 
the Teuton is partly right, for John should not 
be too proud to learn some things from the Teuton, 
— and from us. 

If there is one ambition more dear than another 
to the heart of a German in his own private con- 
ception of things, it is that he should achieve the 
distinction of being rated a gentleman, and in 
spite of his 'Hymn of Hate' the one model that 
he slavishly imitates, is the Englishman. He 
dresses like him, walks like him, lifts his hat and 
bows like him, and if he can speak his language 
with a proper Cockney accent, his education on 
this line is regarded as complete and the tag of 
the gentleman is tied into his button-hole. 

Some of our own folks do the same thing, and 
then a lot of us get quite as vexed with John Bull 
because of it, as we do with our own country- 
men for being possessed of a vaulting ambition as 
extravagant as that. 

[no] 



JOHN BULL AND UNCLE SAM 

Nevertheless and alas however, the German at 
length, becomes conscious that it is evident even 
to himself that there is still something lacking. 
The spirit within can not be successfully camou- 
flaged by the trappings from without. The 
Englishman is a gentleman not because he dresses 
well, but he dresses well because his instincts as 
a gentleman prompt him in that direction, and 
there is a whole world of meaning in this dis- 
tinction. It is a principle that works itself out 
in a multitude of ways in the relationship that 
John Bull maintains towards the rest of man- 
kind. 

John Bull and his Island get many a compli- 
ment from the folk that hate him and are preju- 
diced against him, and one of the funny things 
about it all, is that those of us who don't hate 
him are dubious as to his worthiness to receive 
many of the tributes that the Anglophobist all 
unconsciously, lays at his feet. 

A certain type of petty provincialism never 
tires berating any of our folk who allow them- 
selves to fall under the spell of Mr. and Mrs. 
Bull 's hypnotic eye. To have one 's name on their 
calling list indicates a craven and fawning spirit, 
that has been over-ridden by a more masterful 
will, and the only way to make sure that you don 't 
have the wool pulled over your eyes, is to stay 
on your own side of the sea. With these people 
it is always John Bull that wheedles Uncle Sam 
and never Uncle Sam that wheedles John Bull. 

[Ill] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

What forceful and superior intellects these 
Britishers must have! The only way to make 
sure they won't get you, is to keep away from 
them altogether. I for one, feel inclined to resent 
the implication that John Bull is always the 
stronger character and that Uncle Sam is ever the 
weakling, whose mother doesn't know he is out. 
He is a pretty bird to be sure, to permit salt to 
be put on his tail in that fashion. These good 
people who nurse and cherish so ardently their 
prejudices and their ignorance, must be hard 
pressed for material out of Avhich to construct 
argument or they never would cast such aspersions 
on their own country as they do. 

Another bouquet as unwillingly and uncon- 
sciously bestowed, as it is undeservedly received, 
which the Anglophobist pins on the swelling bosom 
of John Bull, is the insistent demand and expec- 
tation that he discharge all his national and inter- 
national obligations, and maintain a relationship 
towards all peoples under his flag, in such a way 
as to present neither spot nor wrinkle nor any 
such thing. 

Mistakes and failures are to be expected and 
excused elsewhere, but for the British to fail is not 
for a moment to be thought of. To err is human, 
but to err is not British, and is sufficient to have 
any government or governmental official, masquer- 
ading under the name, consigned to perdition by 
the very first caravan going that way. If to ex- 
pect and look for high efficiency and high honor 

[112] 



JOHN BULL AND UNCLE SAM 

on the part of an individual or nation, is an incen- 
tive to heroic endeavor and sacrifice, then Eng- 
land ought to measure up in a superlative degree, 
to the highest ideals national and international, 
that the mind of man has conceived. Even her 
bitterest enemies and calumniators look for and 
expect it of her. There is nothing quite like it in 
all the earth beside. We don't look for infalli- 
bility elsewhere, not even in the United States 
Senate. With the best of intention and manage- 
ment, even there an ignoramus will now and again 
slip by, but that there should be ignorance in 
India or Ehodesia or Ireland, admits of no exten- 
uating excuse whatsoever. 

The managers and leaders in educational work 
among our soldiers in France, tell us that of all 
tJie allied armies in Europe, ours was the most 
illiterate. We think, however, that in intelligence 
our force would compare favorably with the best, 
for there is a difference between illiteracy and 
ignorance; but if the worst comes to the worst, 
and these men can make good their startling 
assertion as to illiteracy in all its bearings, we 
still feel that there are extenuating circumstances 
that prevail to the same extent in no other land. 
Our Anglophobist, however, insists that circum- 
stances could be ignored or overborne where the 
British flag flies, and that all ignorance and super- 
stition and fanaticism should vanish, even in Ire- 
land, and if they do not, some official has blun- 
dered and ought to be hanged. We do not look 

[II31 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

for such miracles anywhere but under British rule. 
There, we feel sure, the impossible can be made 
possible. What compliment or credit could be 
more genuine and sincere than that? 

One of the meanest and most contemptible lines 
of propaganda, that the British haters have been 
pursuing, has been the effort to stir up ill feeling 
over the part England took or failed to take in 
the matter of conveying our troops to and from 
Europe. When it was a matter of getting our 
men over and into the fighting we are told, she 
was eager enough to supply us with ships, but 
when the fighting was over and we wanted to get 
our boys home, she had other use for her boats. 
In the first place one wonders why it is that some 
of our people persist in pushing Uncle Sam into 
the position of being a spectator, standing on the 
side lines watching the game. So far as my obser- 
vation goes, that has never been the way our 
Uncle has gone to war. What did we get into 
the war for if not to fight, and how could we fight 
two thousand miles away from the firing line? 
Was it not as urgent and as necessary for our 
own sakes as for the sake of the Allies in general 
or of England in particular, that our soldiers be 
gotten over to France in as large numbers, and 
as quickly as possible? We were all in the same 
boat. Would we not have expected then, that 
every man among us would off with his hat in 
admiration and gratitude towards the nation that 
was not only able but willing, in the face of her 



JOHN BULL AND UNCLE SAM 

rapidly decreasing tonnage, to take the risk of 
interrupting the flow of supplies that meant death 
or life to her own people, in order to give us a 
lift ? John Bull in effect, said to his own fighting 
men standing on the firing line all the way from 
the North Cape to the Cape of Good Hope ; — 
''Hold the line. Make the most of the supplies 
you have got. Our ships are needed elsewhere. 
We know you will do it, for England expects 
every man to do his duty. ' ' To his men at home 
he said; — ''Prepare to take in your belts another 
hole," and to his women and children; — "We 
know the stuff you are made of. Your heroic 
spirit is the admiration and wonder of every 
chivalrous soul the world over. We may have to 
make another cut in rations, and take the risk of 
running a bit closer to the border line of hunger 
and want, but our ships are needed to bring a 
new army across the sea." This was the spirit 
in which England gave us the use of her ships, 
and when she had given us the help and had turned 
to take up again the interrupted and all but super- 
human task of carrying supplies and conveying 
her own people, it was in the same spirit of cheer- 
ful co-operation and good will, though she could 
not hope to catch up and make good the interrup- 
tion in many months, — not indeed till long after 
the time at which the Armistice was signed, for 
the carrying of supplies had to go on, Armistice 
or no Armistice. One blushes to think that there 
should have been a single soul between the two 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

oceans, so lost to honor and decency as to dig 
into the muck in search of some foul charge to 
fling in the face of our ally in connection with a 
service as magnificent as that. 

When the Armistice was signed, there were 
several thousand Canadian and Australian troops 
in France and Flanders. All caked and crusted 
with mud and blood they had been fighting like 
devils for four years, — fighting for themselves 
and their own countries, of course, but fighting 
for us and our country, too. They were homesick 
and when the fighting stopped, they wanted to get 
back to the folks they had left behind, but England 
could not spare the ships to take them home, and 
her inability was due in part at least, to the fact 
that she was straining every nerve to let us have 
what ships she could to fetch our boys home. There 
were English Tommies in Africa and Asia and 
on all the battle fronts of Europe who had been 
away and in the thick of the fight for more than 
four years, and England couldn't bring them 
home. 

If our big hearted boys over in France, — God 
bless them, had had the matter put up to them 
as it really was, I think I know pretty nearly what 
they would have said. Ninety-nine out of every 
hundred would have expressed themselves in some 
such language as this : — ''0 Gol darn it, we aint 
hogs ; — Take the Canucks home first. They have 
earned the right to the first chance. "We can wait. 
And the Anzacks too! They are farther from 

[116] 



JOHN BULL AND UNCLE SAM 

home and have been away longer than we have. 
Ship them off to the land of the kangaroo. We'll 
wait. And Mr. Thomas Atkins, away for four 
years from 'ome and native land! Lord bless 
'im, 'ow can 'e stand it? Give him our compli- 
ments. Tell him, we aint just falling all over the 
neck of his tea and his gooseberry jam, but we 
found out what we never knew before, — that he 
is game and a sport and a gentleman of honor. 
Ship him back to Blighty. We'll wait. Dammit 
there aint no Sinn Fein about us." 

It is in some such way as this that our lads 
would have expressed themselves in France, but 
when they got back and the slimey, crawling dis- 
seminators of spite and suspicion began to din it 
into their ears, that the reason why they were so 
long in getting home was because England, while 
she could give ships enough to cart them over 
and dump them into the trenches to be shot to 
pieces by the Hun, had no ships to spare when we 
wanted to bring them home again, what wonder 
that some of them began to feel they had, a griev- 
ance against John Bull ! The thing looked plaus- 
ible enough, and plausible lies are the most 
malicious and wicked of the breed. Sad to say, 
we have some folk and there are Legislators and 
Editors and News Paper Proprietors among 
them, who are experts at manufacturing this par- 
ticular brand of falsehood. 

It is reported that the Father of Lies himself, 
is so jealous of them that he sits in a blue funk 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

half the time in his den, and without reading 
them, throws into the fire the reports that Mun- 
chausen brings in. 

This Anti-British and Pro-German spirit mani- 
fested by some of our people, is very hard to 
understand. It usually displays a gross and 
lamentable and wholly inexcusable ignorance, but 
that seems hardly sufficient to account for the in- 
tensity and bitterness of it. That it should have 
existed of and by itself, is bad enough, but that 
it should have assumed the form of taking to its 
bosom the treacherous and brutal enemies of man- 
kind against whom we had been compelled to 
draw the sword, seems altogether beyond belief. 
Sinn Fein allied himself with the Boche and 
fought on his side through the war, in the only 
way this kind of craven coward knows how to 
fight, — from ambush and by assassination, and 
when a bunch of them came over to this country, 
their hands dripping red with the blood of our own 
people that they had helped the Hun to do to their 
death, and yoked up with a band of hyphenated 
traitors here, who long ago, ought to have been 
lined up against a wall in front of a firing squad, 
— Legislators and Legislatures, Governors of 
States and Mayors of Cities, received them with 
open arms and tumbled over one another in an 
effort to do them honor. Such pusillanimity would 
have been incredible of belief if we hadn't seen it 
acted out before our eyes. Thank the good Lord, 
there are Mayors and public officials out your 

[ii8] 



JOHN BULL AND UNCLE SAM 

way, who have something other than a bit of 
cartilaginous shoe string for vertebrae, and who 
were courageous enough to put their whole poli- 
tical future in jeopardy by refusing to recognize 
or give countenance to the representatives of 
people, who if they only could have done it, would 
have sent every transport load of our boys to 
the bottom of the Atlantic. But don 't be so vain, 
my son, as to think that all the backbone in the 
country resides west of the Mississippi. There 
were officials here in the East, that these oleagin- 
ous assassins of human liberty did not dare ap- 
proach for fear of being thrown into the gutter. 

In this connection I notice that some of the Sinn 
Fein agitators in search of sympathy, are trying 
to squirm out of the position in which they placed 
themselves as enemies of America, by the effort 
they made to help the Hun win the war. They 
frankly admit and rather boast that they were 
eager and anxious that Germany should come out 
on top at first; but that the war is divided into 
two periods in their thought, — one preceding and 
the other following our entrance into it. At the 
beginning of the second period they became con- 
vinced that the Central Powers could not win with 
our country against them. Just what these bril- 
liant expounders of truth and honor, would have 
us infer from this peculiar mode of reasoning, 
does not seem exactly clear. Do they mean to 
imply that out of respect for us they turned 
against the Hun, or at least deserted him and 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

assumed an attitude of neutrality, — that over 
night the leopard changed his spots, so to speak? 
Or do they wish us to know that if there had been 
a ghost of a chance for the German to beat down 
his foes, they would not have played the part of 
traitor to their ally, but would have fought to the 
bitter end, irrespective of the position we had 
taken 1 Or more simply, is it just a matter of fact 
way in which Sinn Fein tells us that the rats 
came to the conclusion that it was high time for 
them to begin to leave the sinking ship? 

We do not forget however, that it was in the 
former period of the war that Belgium was raped, 
that Louvain and Dinant were burned, that nuns 
and other women were brutally assaulted, that 
priests and other civilians were murdered in cold 
blood and that the Lusitania with many of our 
o"v\ai people was sent to the bottom of the ocean. 

To run with the hare and hunt with the hounds 
is an accomplishment that other people as well as 
Sinn Fein, have found it rather difficult to acquire. 



[120] 



CHAPTER Xn 

Jealousies 

NO DOUBT there is much truth iu the sug- 
gestion that Great Britain is the victim of 
her own success, and that this fact lies 
close at the bottom of much of the ill-will and 
hostile criticism directed against her from many 
quarters. Laying aside for the moment the ques- 
tion of merit or demerit, the good or bad uses to 
which she has put her wealth and her power, 
there can be no question as to the fact that Britain 
is the greatest Empire that has ever existed in 
the history of mankind; and when some of the 
keenest and most competent students of history 
and of governmental affairs, in other lands and 
particularly in our own country confess and affirm, 
whether they are willing to do so or not, that 
the greatest Empire is at the same time the great- 
est Democracy that the world has ever seen, the 
paradox is so astounding and the facts so stub- 
born and assertive, it is little wonder that many 
people who have made up their minds to believe 
the opposite, are rendered impatient to an extent 
that is hard to restrain and keep from boiling 
over the top. 
When a yacht that we are satisfied, is built on 

[121] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

lines that ought to doom her to failure and defeat, 
persists in showing her heels to her competitors, 
and time and again leads the field home, we are 
apt to feel that she isn't dealing fairly by us, 
especially if we have bet our money on the other 
craft; and, if we are not careful, are in danger of 
cherishing a secret wish that something may hap- 
pen that will send her speedily to the companion- 
ship of Davy Jones. 

For the last twenty-five years Ave have heard 
it repeated so often, that we have simply taken 
it for granted as a fact, that Great Britain was a 
decadent nation and on the down grade. Then 
there came the world war and Britain simply as- 
tounded the world when it began to dawn upon 
mankind, that with a vigor and force such per- 
haps as she had never exhibited at any previous 
time, she quietly refuted her critics by doing and 
more than doing what they said she could never 
do again; and at the end of four years fighting was 
going stronger than ever. There is a certain type 
of mind that cannot forgive that kind of thing. 

Burdened by a national debt before the war, 
that we all said was a mill-stone about her neck, 
she was able to finance her own end of the war 
and that of her allies until we came in, and at the 
end came out a creditor to other nations quite up 
to if not beyond her indebtedness to us, — thus 
showing a perversity that some folk find it hard 
to forgive. 

That in less than four years, she should have 

[122] 



JEALOUSIES 

overtaken Germany's lead of forty years in the 
matter of production of war munitions and equip- 
ment of all kinds, was the salvation of her allies 
including- the United States, but it was an achieve- 
ment rather exasperating to jealous folk. 

That she should have laid upon the altar of 
human liberty a holocaust of young manhood so 
great that if every one of the two million in the 
American Expeditionary Force in France, and 
every one of the one and one-half million ready 
to go across, had become a casuality, the total 
would have fallen short by more than fifty thou- 
sand of the sacrifice Britain made, led multitudes 
of us to bow our heads in amazement and grate- 
ful admiration, but at the same time seems only 
to have added fuel to the hate burning in jealous 
hearts. 

One is almost compelled to suspect that the 
underlying reason for the unkind and manifestly 
unjust criticisims passed upon England in con- 
nection with the carrying of our troops, has its 
roots in the same principle. What a tonnage 
England must have had to begin with, far more 
than any nation had any business to have, if after 
months of submarine warfare, when she was losing 
at the rate of many thousands of tons every week, 
she was still able to convey more than half our 
men for us. Big hearted men thought it was great 
and grand. Pigmy, provincial men could hardly 
forgive England for being able to do as much. 

Whatever may be said of these things, one can 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

not read nor listen to the bitter denunciations of 
England which the Sinn Fein people indulge in, 
without being convinced that the greatest griev- 
ance they have in these days, is that long ago she 
redressed and did away with every legitimate 
grievance and left them the necessity of dragging 
to the front ancient wrongs, or of manufacturing 
out of whole cloth, new ones to expatiate upon. 
When we have made all due allowance for the mis- 
takes and blunders incident to the solution of a 
difficult problem, one of the most conspicuous 
facts that presents itself, is the fair dealing and 
patience that the government of Great Britain 
and Ireland, has displayed towards the malcon- 
tents and fanatical mischief makers, whose busi- 
ness it has been to make trouble for poor old 
Ireland. In reality, in the minds of many of these 
trouble makers, England 's greatest crime has been 
her patience and her fair play. Indeed to them 
it has been anything but fair play, to rob them 
in this way, of their most efficient weapons and 
their most effective amunition. 

It is in this quiet but telling way that England 
often disarms her critics. It is this habit of 
quietly doing the things we all said she had long 
since lost the ability to do, and of succeeding 
where she has no business to succeed, that is so 
exasperating. It is this more than anything else 
perhaps, that leads prejudiced minds to conclude 
that some crooked or underhanded method must 
have been employed to bring to pass these results. 

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JEALOUSIES 

This type of mind sees no other way in which the 
thing could be done, and so of course, England 
succeeds because she oppresses, coerces and ex- 
ploits. This type of mind knows nothing of the 
principle, that the individual and the nation that 
serve others most, serve themselves best in the 
long run. The self service can be seen and it 
awakens jealousy, but the service of others, out 
of which it grows, jealous folk can not or will not 
see. England of course is selfish like the rest of 
us, grossly selfish at times no doubt, but long 
ago she discovered that to exploit and despoil 
other peoples, is not the way to permanently 
profit by association with them. She has learned 
what is difficult for some people to learn, that the 
more prosperous she can help another people to 
become, the larger the volume of trade she is likely 
to be able to carry on with that people. The more 
she can help them, the more they can help her. 
The more she invests in their interests, the larger 
the returns will be that accrue to herself. Her 
critics very quickly see the profits she enjoys by 
dealing with these other peoples, but with their 
way of looking at things, and I fear we must con- 
clude, with their way of doing things, can not see 
hoAv it could happen apart from exploitation and 
double dealing. These are some of the things that 
it would be well for people to ponder in these days 
when the hate breeder and spite monger is abroad 
in the land. 

Coupled with these things, is the still more 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

significant fact, that wherever England goes, other 
peoples and nations are as free to go as herself. 
There is no harbor nor port in all the wide world 
under British rule, where the ships of other 
nations are not as free to go as British ships and 
on precisely the same terms. The British trader 
takes an even chance with the trader of any and 
every other nation, no more and no less wherever 
his own flag flies, and the people under that flag, 
no matter what their stage of civilization may 
be, are as free to trade and bargain with another 
as with the Englishman himself. What they have 
to sell they may sell to whom they please, just as 
they may buy from whom they please. This too is 
something that narrow minded jealous folk find 
it hard to understand; and not a few I fear are 
too ignorant and too prejudiced to recognize it 
as a fact. It is much easier to go on cherishing 
and cultivating suspicion and ill-will. It is easier 
to fix attention upon one side of the problem, than 
to examine it from every side, and so to keep on 
insisting that England is ever advancing her own 
interests at the expense of other people. This is 
the thing the Anglophobist likes best to believe 
and so of course to him it is true, — all the more 
true, I fear, because consciously or unconsciously 
he knows that this is what he would do if he were 
in England's place. Here again, as in the case of 
so many things connected with the perfidious 
British Empire, facts controvert theories and pre- 
conceptions and by so doing throw a few more 

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JEALOUSIES 

liaiidfuls of fuel on the fires of hate. It is true 
that England enjoys preferential rates at the Cus- 
tom Houses of some of her Colonies, and to this 
extent has an advantage over outside competitors. 
This however is not the act of England but the 
voluntary act of the particular Colony, and Eng- 
land is able to avail herself of the preference 
because of the liberality of her own tariff laws. 
Any other nation giving the Colony like privileges, 
could avail itself of the rebate on exactly the same 
terms as England, so that even in this exceptional 
case England has no advantage under her own 
flag that another nation may not have if it so 
desires. 

When the great war broke out, the exploited 
and oppressed Dependencies of England of their 
own free choice expressed their pent-up feelings 
over the matter as to England 's taking advantage 
of them, by sending a million or more volunteers 
of almost every race and clime, to help fight the 
battle of the mother land. Most significant of all 
perhaps, in this connection was the attitude of 
India, — that wonderful country held in subjec- 
tion and oppressed by a conquering power, — 
seething in ignorance and groaning under in- 
human taxation, — and in whose interest a band 
of philanthropic Anglophobists recently called 
into being an organization, bearing some such 
original name as the ''Friends of India's Free- 
dom," and in the ranks of which, when first 
organized, there was not a single native of 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

Hindustan. The answer that India made like 
so many other answers coming from the ends 
of the earth, must have been very disconcerting 
and exasperating to the apostles of hate, if 
indeed they took the trouble to inform them- 
selves about it; for we are told by those who 
know and who emphatically affirm it, that if she 
had wished to do so, England could have recruited 
without conscription, an army of several million 
men in India to fight for human freedom under 
her leadership; and what India actually did do 
was to insist upon being represented on the west- 
ern battle front by an expeditionary force of her 
own, equipped and financed at her own expense. 
I suppose that is another example of England's 
ability to pull the wool over other people's eyes. 
What else could it be? One wonders why the 
ramshackle old Empire doesn't fall to pieces as 
it ought to do. Today those who are looking for 
this to happen, are sure it is held together by 
nothing stronger than a rope of sand, — tomorrow 
the same people are certain that by the brutal 
coercion of military force, helpless and hopeless 
people are held in subjection by the dominant race. 
The growth of the British Empire and the 
methods by which that growth has been secured 
constitute a matter as full of melancholy as the 
toothache to the average hater of Britain and 
British institutions and no contact with ice on 
the one hand or hot air on the other, seems to 
have much effect in reducing the fever or allaying 

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JEALOUSIES 

the anguish. I'm afraid much as I would like to 
do it, I find no word of defence to offer for a people 
who have shown such a propensity for appropriat- 
ing odds and ends of territory found lying loose 
in all quarters of the globe. True, she usually gets 
there first, but that is no excuse. She ought not 
to get there first. Indeed I do not like the idea 
that Britain should have been almost as success- 
ful as ourselves in dispossessing aboriginal tribes 
of their ancestral heritage and of relegating them 
to a convenient corner of their appropriated 
domain. Moreover it helps matters little to be 
told that a large percentage of her accumulated 
plunder is made up of loot that she compelled 
other thieves to disgorge. Her success in this par- 
ticular line of operation only adds to her crimi- 
nality and her condemnation and increases the 
number of those who would like to assist in robbing 
her in turn if they only could, and anyway the 
beauty of the landscape is in no way enhanced 
by the kettle telling the pot that its countenance is 
as Ethiopian as her own. 

There are however, some side lights thrown 
upon these problems by certain incidents in the 
world war, that have considerable interest for the 
student of world problems and international rela- 
tionships, at the present time. 

At the beginning of the war Germany possessed 
Colonies in Africa, embracing a territory of 
nearly a million square miles; at the end of the 
war, Germany found herself shorn of these African 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

possessions. This vast territory many times as 
large as the Fatherland, and nearly a third as 
large as the United States, constituted one of the 
spoils of war that passed to the account of the 
allied side. 

There are some considerations that have a 
peculiar interest in connection with the conquest 
of this Africo-Germanic territory, and the first is 
that it was practically an achievement of British 
arms and of British Arms alone, and a second 
consideration is that Britain turned over the cap- 
ture to be disposed of by the Peace Commission 
at Paris. Of course you say this is what she 
ought, to have done, but the question may be 
fairly asked, is there another nation that under 
the circumstances, would have done it? I hope 
and firaily believe that our country would have 
done exactly the thing Britain did, but it is mor- 
ally certain that the men who made the most 
noise over Shantung, would have protested most 
vociferously against the idea that any nation 
should have a say in the disposal of this territory 
except ourselves, had our army made the con- 
quest. Quite a stir was being made in those days 
over the sale of certain German ships. Some of 
the watch-dogs on Capitol Hill were barking 
pretty loudly, because it seems, they saw what 
looked like a burglar in the habiliments of John 
Bull, ringing the bell at the White House door. 
It seems the portly gentleman from across the 
sea wanted to buy some of these ships. Most of 

[130] 



JEALOUSIES 

us like to go into the open market to buy the 
best that is going at the lowest possible price, 
but John Bull ought not to do that. It only shows 
the grasping and selfish disposition by which he 
is controlled. He always wants the best. Let 
him dig up his own old ships from the bottom 
of the Irish Sea. I don't know much about this 
ship business, and I may be altogether wrong. 
It seems however that the disposal of the ships 
taken in our ports, went before the Peace Com- 
missioners, and we insisted that after our ship- 
ping losses had been made good from the total 
tonnage, the balance should remain under our 
flag and the value of the same be credited to 
Germany on reparation account. So then the 
whole situation looks a bit as follows, does it not? 
Britain by herself and alone, made capture of 
certain German Colonies in Africa and when she 
had them well secured, she hauled down her flag 
and left them to the disposal of the Allies in con- 
ference. Japan by herself and alone captured 
from Germany the Shantung peninsula, and when 
she had it well secured, she gave the promise 
that at some future time she would haul down her 
flag. We also of and by ourselves made a capture. 
To be sure ours was not territory, but ships, but 
when we had them well secured we ran up our 
flag; and certain of our Super- Americans kept 
demanding that it shall not be hauled down till 
the Last Great Day, well on in the afternoon, and 
then only, if judgment has been already passed on 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

John Bull and lie has been assigned to his proper 
place in the final assize. Of course, patriotism is 
a vital principle and needs to be encouraged but 
one wonders if it is necessary in the process of 
encouragement, to stick pins into the trousers of 
other folk. How international good manners 
might be improved if all nations and races could 
see themselves as others see them! What a fine 
thing it would be if in this old world we could 
keep in mind that there are good and bad among 
every people, worthy and unworthy citizens in 
every nation. That for instance, some of the men 
who happen to be our misrepresentatives at 
Washington at the present time, do not constitute 
America; that the fire-eaters of Japan are not 
Japan; that the Junkers and flannelled fools of 
England are not England and that dear old 
Ireland is a whole lot bigger and better than Sinn 
Fein. 

This capture of the German Colonies in Africa 
is of interest from another point of view. It was 
no part of the allied plan to dispossess Germany 
of these Colonies at the outbreak of the war. 
Indeed the Allies had no thought of dis- 
possessing her of anything, since it was Germany 
that planned and inaugurated the conflict. The 
capture of this territory was simply an incidental 
and in a sense, an accidental occurrence in the 
prosecution of the war. It was a side issue so 
to speak, a later development and an after- 
thought in the campaign. This fact sets us won- 

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JEALOUSIES 

dering, if in this we have the only instance in 
which territory came into the hands of Great 
Britain, not because she set out with the purpose 
of taking possession, but as a bi-product of a 
war which had its cause and inception in prob- 
lems of a more or less different kind. To what 
extent and in wliat degree if at all, did this prin- 
ciple hold sway in the building up of Britain 's 
colonial Empire in days gone by? There is, it 
seems to me, a line of investigation suggested 
here, that holds the promise of considerable inter- 
est for any one who has the ability and the taste 
for it, if they would take it up. 

The Eighteenth Century was full of wars that 
are usually designated '^ Colonial Wars;" for 
Colonial problems to a greater or less extent, 
entered into most of them. It was natural, when 
new worlds were being discovered, that virile, 
active, enterprising peoples should push forward 
to explore and to possess. This was inevitable 
and gives no just cause for censure. Circumspect 
people, staying at home, not because they were 
virtuous but because they lacked enterprise, then 
and now might thank Providence that they were 
not as other men are; but in the main it could 
not be helped, unless there had been some ex- 
ternal force strong enough to compel pioneers 
to stay at home, in which case there would have 
been no America, and no hyphenated Americans 
to breed trouble for ourselves and for others. It 
was just as inevitable that pioneers of different 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

races and nations should come into conflict, and 
that the several home governments should 
espouse the cause of their own folk, so that strife 
starting at the circumference of things, soon 
worked its way towards the heart of the parent 
nation; but it is also true that wars originating 
in fundamental claims and problems at the cen- 
ters of national life, in time, reached the circum- 
ference by a more or less protracted course of 
events and resulted in the transfer of territory 
from the dominion of one power to another. Often 
times of course, there was a mixture of these pro- 
cesses, so confused and intricate that it is most 
difficult to determine in what direction the 
dominant motive and purpose is proceeding. If 
however, all the cases in which Britain has added 
to her possessions after the manner in which the 
German Colonies in Africa came into her hands in 
the late war, were counted in with the very con- 
siderable number of peoples and territories who 
have petitioned to be taken under her care, it miglit 
be discovered that a goodly portion of England's 
Colonial Empire has been accumulated by pro- 
cesses not so greatly deserving of censure after all. 
The conquest of Canada is a case that might 
be examined in the light of this consider- 
ation. To be sure the expedition under General 
Wolfe was dispatched expressly for the purpose 
of taking Quebec; but that undertaking was only 
an incident in the progress of the ** Seven Years 
War, ' ' a war which had its inception and primary 

[134] 



JEALOUSIES 

cause in the Old World and not in the New. More- 
over this war had run nearly half its course 
before Wolfe appeared on the St, Lawrence, and 
in any case it would become us not to be too 
harsh in our condemnation of Britain for this 
particular bit of robbery, for it was undertaken 
and carried to success largely at the instigation 
and in defense of the American Colonies, soon to 
set up an independent government of their own; 
and besides it settled for all time the dominance 
of Anglo Saxon civilization in North America, a 
thing the colonists were especially anxious to 
secure. 

It was in tliis same Seven Years War, originat- 
ing in Europe and in European problems, that 
the foundations of British Rule in India were 
laid, and it is very difficult to see how it could 
have been avoided, or that anybody is so very 
criminally to blame, seeing that to keep tilings 
straight, the day had not fully come for the evolu- 
tion of the fighting pacifist, the hyphenated 
American, or the bellicose gentleman called Sinn 
Fein, — the day moreover and alas, in which there 
should blossom forth aspirants to the Presidency 
bent on capturing the hyphenated vote by giving 
the lion's tail a vigorous twist. If any or all of 
these defenders of justice and honor had been on 
the field of action in those days, the story of 
human history might have been differently writ- 
ten, morally as well as geographically and in other 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

ways; and I don't see but they are the ones who 
should lie under the heaviest condemnation for 
being so tardy in coming to the help and defence 
of the world against the arrogant and aggressive 
A;nglo Saxon. 



[136] 



CHAPTER Xm 

National Chakacteeistics 

PERHAPS I shall be taken to task for trying 
to discover reasons for thinking well of 
other folk, or at least for making some 
little effort to find excuses and palliations for the 
crimes and misdemeanors and excesses of John 
Bull. Doubtless there are those who would think 
I might be better employed searching for some- 
thing to say on behalf and in defence of Uncle 
Sam. I claim however that I am a better patriot 
than any such possible critic, in that I do not see 
that my beloved Uncle is greatly in need of such 
defence. When a propaganda of hate sets itself 
in his direction, there may be something doing. 
Then it might be well for interested parties to 
telephone for an ambulance in advance. More- 
over it seems to me but a poor brand of patriotism 
that fears lest it be abridged or weakened by a 
fuller knowledge and appreciation of other coun- 
tries and peoples, or by a deeper interest in their 
well-being. A patriotism that packs itself away 
in moth balls, may be and apparently is the ideal 
of some people, but give me the kind that can 
live out of doors, sharing the sun and the winds 
that are the common possession of all the nations 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

and races of men. Intelligence makes a better 
foundation upon which to erect a superstructure 
of patriotism than ignorance; and the man who 
with something of a sneer in his voice towards 
other peoples, proclaims his own country good 
enough for him, might gravely concern himself 
with the question as to whether his country en- 
tertains or has cause to entertain a like opinion 
of him. It is just possible that we may fall into 
the habit of rating ourselves as citizens a bit 
higher than our country cares, or has any cause 
to do. Pride in our country is a fine thing, but 
that our country should have a chance to take 
pride in us, is something equally to be desired, 
and this juvenile clamor about the Americaniza- 
tion of a Peace Treaty in which a score or more 
nations have an equal interest with ourselves, 
does not help to any great extent in that direc- 
tion. The day is rapidly approaching, if it has 
not already come when callow, immature claptrap 
like that, will have no more effect in winning 
votes than the claim that governments can change 
the course of the seasons, or modify the move- 
ments of the moon. Uncle Sam is getting a bit 
restive under the constant implication that he 
hasn't grown up yet. Leaders of public opinion 
who misconstrue and befog the issues, whether it 
be from pure ignorance or common cussedness, 
are going to get short shrift my son, in this our 
beloved land before many decades have rolled by. 
There is abundant reason in this connection for 

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NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

a larger and more cordial fellowship between 
America and Britain, not only for their own sake 
but for the world's sake as well, and this can 
be fostered in no way to such an extent, as by a 
wider and more accurate knowledge and under- 
standing of one people by the other. When facts 
and reasonable inferences displace prejudices and 
suspicions as a basis for forming opinions and 
judgments, a way will be open for cementing a 
friendship, in the benefit of which all mankind 
will share. 

May we not suggest at this point, that a new 
organization be called into being to be known as 
the Knights of Washington and Lincoln, and in 
whose membership could be enrolled citizens of 
every racial stock and of any or all religious affilia- 
tions. Among other objects perhaps, the purpose 
of this organization would be to combat every 
kind of propaganda that seeks to perpetuate racial 
animosities and ancient feuds; to inculcate and 
cultivate a patriotism based on intelligence and 
good will, and most of all to promote and foster 
good fellowship and mutual understanding be- 
tween this Nation and all other English speaking 
peoples. 

I am sure that multitudes of Americans dis- 
covered during the war, that deep down at the 
very center of their being, there existed a thank- 
fulness and a pride in the fact that the basis of 
our civilization and of our governmental and 
other institutions, is British and not something 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

else. Conceivably it might have been something 
else. It might have been Rooshan, or Prooshan, 
or Portugee, and if the antecedents of Sinn Fein 
had their way, undoubtedly it would have been 
Spanish. More than once I have heard ardent 
New Englanders with six or more generations of 
that kind of ancestry back of them express a pride 
that the war had awakened and in which they 
gloried, namely, that not a drop of blood ran in 
their veins except that which had its fountain head 
in old England across the sea. 

This natural and wholly to be expected coming 

together then, of the English speaking Nations in 

mutual understanding and good will as a result 

of their cooperation on the battle fields of Europe, 

constituted a challenge to the traffickers in hate. 

It threatened their dominant influence on the one 

hand, and their revenues on the other, and so had 

to be headed off at all costs. This is largely the 

meaning of the arrogant and intolerable Sinn 

Fein agitation that has been going forward so 

vigorously, especially since the war came to an 

end. It is now or never for these people. That 

is evidently the way they feel about it. If the 

two nations that have been the chief champions 

and exponents of civil and religious liberty, can 

be kept apart and induced to become more and 

more envious and suspicious of one another, there 

is hope that autocracy may even yet survive and 

reassert itself notwithstanding the smashing blow 

it received in the world war. Far better than the 

[140] 



NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

rest of us, and especially better than those he 
manipulates and exploits, the reactionary knows 
that his chief hope lies in setting at variance the 
two powers whose enlightened and forward look- 
ing spirit he both hates and fears, hence the most 
unscrupulous and unprincipled methods and agen- 
cies are employed to drive a wedge between 
America and England. The marvel of it all is 
that so many of our people lend themselves to be 
duped by the greatest menace that has threatened 
our liberties since the very beginning of the na- 
tion's life. To strain at the Peace Treaty and 
the League of Nations and then swallow the Sinn 
Fein camel, would provoke mirth if it did not 
awake pity and sadness in the hardest heart. 
Impatience and disgust with Sinn Fein methods 
and practices, we may not be able to restrain, 
but when our own folk try us beyond endurance, 
by the way they fall down before such brazen 
mendacity, we simply rub our eyes and silently 
wonder if this can be the land of Washington and 
Lincoln after all. 

Two recent examples of the Sinn Fein way of 
carrying out its unhallowed purposes, come to 
mind at the present moment, — not indeed as 
having much weight when related to the matter 
involved, but as fairly good examples of the whole 
Sinn Fein method of attack and defence. When 
the seventeen thousand brave men and women 
hissed the President of the American Republic in 
Madison Square Garden, it slowly dawned upon 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

their leaders that a mistake had been made, and 
so at a later meeting, — as the course of the em- 
pire held its westward sway, — it was thought 
l3est to make some kind of an explanation, and the 
usual but peculiar working of the Irish agitator 's 
mind was disclosed, when the speaker charged 
that the enemies of Ireland's cause were the real 
offenders, in that they had stolen their way into 
the Garden and had started the booing in order 
that the people in whose interests the meeting 
was held, would have to bear the blame. 

Later in the year, when an attempt was made 
to assassinate Lord French in Dublin, a spell- 
binder in this country announced his assurance 
that the whole thing was framed up, and that the 
friends of French pulled off a bluff in order that 
the cause of Sinn Fein would bear the odium and 
appear before the world as an organization of as- 
sassins and thugs. It is only the lowest type of 
mentality, morally as well as intellectually, that 
ever descends to this kind of argumentation. It 
would seem, however, to be a very natural mode 
of procedure for Sinn Fein, since at one of their 
mass meetings, a brilliant idea took possession 
of the mind of somebody. A Canadian Uniform 
was secured in some way and an enthusiastic Sinn 
Feiner clothed in these honored garments, vig- 
orously led the cheering in order to send abroad 
the impression that Canadian soldiers gave their 
countenance and support to the Sinn Fein propa- 
ganda. The childish ruse was discovered and 

[142] 



NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

shown to be absolutely as I have stated. Anybody 
who saw the Canadian troops capture Vimy Ridge 
and Passchendael and break through the Hinden- 
burgh Line, will find it hard to believe that a single 
member of the force could be found who would so 
disgrace and dishonor his comrades, who by the 
thousands lie sleeping their last sleep in those 
historic places, as to give encouragement for a 
single moment to the people and principles they 
gave their lives to defeat. Would it be any won- 
der, if after this insult to their uniform every 
man in the Canadian Army is aching to meet these 
people in fair fight on Flanders' Field. Be well 
assured, my dear boy, they would make short work 
of them, and incidentally would settle the Irish 
problem for a generation at least. 

These incidents have little interest save that 
they show the spirit and manner in which this vile 
propaganda is carried on. Sinn Fein never struck 
a clean blow in all its life. It would be hooted out 
of the ring in every arena where men of honor 
measure against one another, their strength and 
their skill. Sad to say however there are Ameri- 
can politicians and legislators who do not dare 
refuse to listen to what it has to say, and the 
abject pity of it all is that the Senate at Wash- 
ington, or the Foreign Relations Committee of the 
same, have spent many precious hours listening 
to rodomontade such as that to which I have re- 
ferred. It would seem that this is what some of 
our wise men like best to hear, for there has come 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

reverberating from under the Capitol's dome, in 
a sonorous monotone, a denunciation of England 
for her treatment of India and Egypt, — * Seeth- 
ing in ignorance and groaning under inhuman 
taxation, ' — whatever that may mean. These men 
seem to feel safe in venting their spleen in the 
direction of India or Egypt, thinking evidently 
that other people know as little about these coun- 
tries as they do themselves. ^Ignorance !' About 
the most aggravated example of ' Seething Ignor- 
ance' that exhibits itself for the delectation of 
fallen humanity, in these days, is to be found not 
many feet away from certain desks in the Senate 
Chamber at Washington. 

Of course there is ignorance in India, as there 
is alas, in every country, altogether too much of 
it, but side by side with it there is an intelligence 
at which well-informed people marvel, and that 
needs to ask no odds of us in this favored land, 
and this intelligence is emphatic in its commen- 
dation of English rule. In a vast population com- 
prising more diverse races than are to be found 
in any other geographical unit on the globe, — 
speaking thirty-eight or more different languages, 
a fact in itself sufficient to preclude the possibility 
of any stable national unity at the present time, — 
the coming of British rule was the greatest bless- 
ing that ever descended upon India. That rule 
has been a marvel of efficiency and justice. Peace 
and order and even-handed opportunity and privi- 
lege to all classes among the people, — these 

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NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

things are the increasing fruits of British rule in 
India, and the men who tell us so, are our own 
American Missionaries who have spent their lives 
in the land and in the service of the people. 

'Inhuman taxation,' is a fine phrase to conjure 
with, for none of us greatly enjoy being taxed; 
and it sends us harking back to the days of 
stamped paper and taxes on tea and painter's 
colors. I suppose it is meant to imply that Eng- 
land is enriching herself upon the revenues she 
extracts from the pocket of the pocketless Hindu. 
Men who presume to be fit to legislate for us, 
ought to possess general intelligence enough to 
make them aware that not a penny of India's 
taxation goes into the exchequer of the British 
Empire, — that every rupee is spent in India and 
for the benefit of the Indian people. The nearest 
approach to the inference that the Anglophobist 
would have us draw, is the up-keep- of the small 
military force that serves as an efficient police 
to preserve order and to protect the people from 
the depredations of maurauding tribesmen upon 
their borders. Moreover when this force is used 
in any other part of the Empire as sometimes 
happens, it ceases to be a charge upon the Indian 
treasury and becomes a demand upon the ex- 
chequer of the Empire itself. 

As to the mal-treatment of Egypt ! It may not 
be known to certain Anglophobists in Washington 
and elsewhere, but other people know that Britain 
saved Egypt from being over-run and submerged 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

by the fanatical Mahdists of the Soudan. If it 
had not been for England there would have been 
no Egypt today over which these people could 
shed their crocodile tears. Great Britain taught 
and aided the Egyptians to protect themselves and 
brought to them a prosperity greater and more 
widely distributed among the people than any- 
thing they have enjoyed since the days of Joseph. 
The rank and file of the natives know that Britain 
is the best friend they have ever had in that she 
has shown them the way to an independent human 
existence, and has protected them from the ex- 
ploitation of their selfish and tyrannical masters, 
and intends so to protect them. 

But our Anglophobist asks why Britain didn't 
wait till she was asked to do these things. Possibly 
for the same reason that we didn't. Within easy 
recollection, two great nations, Spain and 
America, — made the Philippine Islands a matter 
of barter and trade after their conquest by the 
United States, and did not say, 'by your leave.' 
The principle of 'self-determination' did not ob- 
trude. I'm one of those folk who believe that it 
was a great day for the Philippines when they 
came under the control of the United States, and 
that it was as great a day for the United States, 
in that it was the first step out of that selfish and 
provincial isolation, into which some of our Self- 
Americanized Americans would pull us back ; but 
the fact remains that we forced our government 
upon the Philippines and against their will. We 

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NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

did the same thing in Porto Rica and in Panama 
or Columbia, and our conduct was not far different 
in Hayti and Cuba, for we told the Cubans if they 
didn't toe a certain mark and keep order among 
themselves, we would come in and see that they 
did. We did go in, and will do it again if need be, 
and while we abridge the independence of Cuba 
in so doing I can not see that we are criminally 
to blame. Yet there are some among us who would 
wring the neck of John Bull, when with equal if 
not greater interests at stake, he seeks to do a 
similar thing in India or Egypt. It is helpful 
too, to take a look sometimes at England's treat- 
ment of backward and exploited races who have 
no national life to meddle with. I refer particu- 
larly to the Black man and the Red man. The 
record has not always been clean, — far from it, 
and yet it presents some aspects that are not alto- 
gether to be ashamed of. We boast, and rightly 
enough, of the Emancipation task that Abraham 
Lincoln carried to a successful issue, but Britain 
emancipated her black slaves through all her do- 
minions, thirty-five years before we did, and she 
accomplished it without a war. Then the story 
of England's dealings with the Red man is much 
pleasanter reading than ours. As we compare 
notes after this fashion, we discover that Eng- 
land's course with weaker and less advanced 
peoples, does not differ greatly from our own. 
I know that these analogies are not always fair. 
Some of them may be unfair to the United States ; 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

but they are exactly in line with much of the 
adverse criticisms and judgments that we indulge 
in with reference to our neighbors in Europe, and 
particularly as directed against the people that 
speak the same language with ourselves. Human 
nature is much alike in both Hemispheres, and in 
neither is it overmuch given to make allowance 
for those ''circumstances that alter cases." 

Not a little has been said about the treatment 
of the South African Republic by the Empire of 
Great Britain, and, as usual, prejudice and pro- 
vincialism have settled the question adversely to 
Britain. One of the contestants was called an 
empire and the other a republic and that is 
enough; and possibly no better example can be 
found in all history of the extreme danger of per- 
mitting mere literalism to determine judgment. 

The primary cause of the conflict between 
Britain and Boor had to do with the enslavement 
of the Black man. Long before Majuba and 
Colenzo and Ladysmith, this was the bone of con- 
tention between the two peoples, and when the 
so-called Eepublic, which was perhaps the most 
corrupt and tyrannical oligarchy in all history, 
got strong enough and wealthy enough as it 
thought itself to be, it determined to pay off old 
scores with the British Empire. yes ! I know 
all about the Rand and the Diamond Mines and 
the Jameson Raid and am not trying to enter a 
defence or procure an alibi for John Bull, but the 
bald fact remains that the Boor had made all his 

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NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

preparations and thouglit the opportune time had 
come for driving the British into the sea. I fear 
we would have been ashamed of Uncle Sam if he 
meekly submitted to a thing like that. 

The more one studies the dealings of Britain 
with her colonial and dependent peoples, the more 
interesting it becomes and the more he discovers 
that there are two sides to most of the contro- 
versies and quite as often as not, these two sides 
are John Bull's side and the wrong side. 

One of the outstanding facts connected with 
Britain's relation to the various partnerships 
within her Empire, easily recognized by those who 
are willing to do so, is the way in which she has 
refrained from imposing her own customs and 
laws upon other folk. She not only never tries to 
make Englishmen of the diverse peoples under 
her care, but she encourages them to develop 
along the line of their several racial character- 
istics. In this she has acted diametrically in an 
opposite direction to the method employed by 
Germany, and this I suppose, is one of the reasons 
why the German calls the Britisher a fool. Fool 
or no fool however, it goes a long way in the 
direction of making look rather foolish, the 
Anglophobists who are fond of condemning 
Britain for oppressive tyranny and coercion in 
dealing with the peoples within her power. 

A good example of this attitude on the part 
of England, is the way she dealt with the con- 
quered French people of Canada. That story goes 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

pretty far back in history, for it is more than 150 
years since the taking of Quebec, and it reveals 
that even at that early date, England was capable 
of showing a generosity and fair play that might 
well give pause to some of her jealous and unfair 
detractors in our time. The French colonists 
were not only permitted to retain their own lan- 
guage and customs, but were granted in perpetuity 
the privilege and the right of doing so. Many 
people no doubt, think a mistake was made in 
this matter. It would seem as if it would have 
been wise to devise some plan that would have 
required a gradual but necessary use of the 
English Language so that by this time in their 
country's history, the average citizen of French 
extraction would have been able to speak and read 
not only his mother tongue, but also that of the 
majority of his fellow-countrymen as well. This 
would not have been a very unkindly tyranny had 
it been required, and it would have been greatly 
to the advantage of the country as a whole, and 
to the French people themselves. But this Britain 
did not do. It would seem that in an effort to be 
fair, she leaned if anything a bit backward. In 
any case she revealed a very different spirit from 
that which is so often credited to her. Of course 
no Anglophobist would ever think of anything like 
this. It is easier to nurse the old prejudices and 
misconceptions and to give expression to judg- 
ments based thereupon. There were men in the 
uniform of the American army, after we became 

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NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

an ally of England, who kept saying, — I suppose 
because they couldn 't help it, — that if England 
were in Germany's place, she would carry on the 
war in a similarly barbarous and brutal fashion. 
This attitude seems inexplicable, seeing that it is 
a well-known fact that after the battle of Waterloo 
more than a hundred years ago, when Paris was 
at the mercy of the allied arms, Blutcher the Prus- 
sian proposed to sack the city and give it over 
to the pillage and outrage of his men, and 
Wellington gave him to understand that if he 
made a move in that direction, the British can- 
non would be trained upon his troops. That was 
the spirit of England one hundred years before 
Louvain. Anybody ought to know that it would 
be an utter impossibility for any people, — 
American, British, French, Italian or Japanese, 
to have acted as Germany did in Belgium. Anglo- 
phobia however, makes it inevitable that its vic- 
tims should believe the impossible. 

O yes! I know very well that the Eed Coats 
and the Hessians were cruel and brutal in the 
days of the Revolution, and the Briton is about 
as much ashamed of it as we are ourselves, but 
I wonder if I dare whisper it, even in your un- 
prejudiced ear ; — there is a story that some day 
we may be able to read with equanimity, but it 
won 't be altogether pleasant reading. There were 
cruelties in other quarters the memory of which 
has been handed down through the generations, 
under another flag than our own. The most 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

blessed thing to know and remember however, is 
the fact that the world in the main, has moved 
forward into a brighter and better day since the 
time when Pitcairn stirred his toddy with his 
bloody finger in the Monroe Tavern nigh unto 
Lexington Green, and said uncomplimentary 
things about the brave Minute Men, who gave his 
Eed Coats the licking they richly deserved. 

It would do us all good to read afresh the story 
of the Revolution and the events remote as well 
as near that led up thereto. We all know about 
the annoyance and oppression of the government 
at home, and the intolerable and haughty super- 
iority and superciliousness that its representa- 
tives assumed towards the colonists. We know 
and have it tatooed upon almost every inch of our 
epidermus, that taxation without representation 
is an outrage. And by the way, if the revolution- 
ists felt as bad over taxation without representa- 
tion as we sometimes do over taxation with misrep- 
resentation, I do not wonder they emptied the 
tea chests into Boston Bay. Be that as it may, 
we know that the Colonists were right and Britain 
was wrong, and we are glad for her sake as well 
as our own that resistance was made and a new 
nation was born; but our memories do not so 
readily carry us back to the protection the British 
Navy gave us in the Colonial period. It was our 
shield in the French wars, just as in a later day 
it stood between us and the Hun. And our mem- 
ories do not clearly recall the huge debt that 

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NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

weighed upon the English people, largely pro- 
duced by the upkeep of that navy, just as we are 
in danger today of forgetting that some of 
England's burden that she is carrying now, 
was incurred in our defence as well as in her own. 
Her service of today however is likely to call to 
the mind of intelligent people her service of a 
century and a half ago, and will in time, it would 
seem, soften somewhat the judgments of fair- 
minded men as they contemplate her effort to 
compel us to buy and drink tea upon which she 
had laid a tax in the hope of liquidating something 
of her debt. 

Today England asks for no recompence, nor 
expects any, but on her own behalf and on behalf 
of the other allies, she would like to borrow a few 
of the shekels we piled up as a result of the war 
until such time as her crops are ripe and her 
ships come home. Some of our far-seeing states- 
men seem to have an idea that John Bull expects 
to profit or he would not want to borrow, and 
their counsel would be not to lend him the money. 

The part the British Navy has played in the 
history not only of England but of the world is 
a familiar story. As I have said, it saved the 
North American Colonies from extinction before 
they became a nation. For a hundred years it 
has secured and maintained the Freedom of the 
seas, not for its own merchantmen alone, but for 
the mercantile marine of every nation whose 
people go to sea. It has made all the lanes of 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

the world's commerce as secure from molestation 
as a village street. It has charted the seven seas, 
so that the danger to navigation from rocks and 
shoals and contrary currents has been reduced 
to a minimum. The world 's debt to the sea-dogs 
of England is beyond calculation. There are none 
of us who do not profit by its watch and care, for 
there isn't a dweller in the remotest hamlet of 
a great Continent who does not rely for some of 
the necessaries and comforts of life, upon ocean 
borne commerce, and yet how many people there 
are who enjoy all this from day to day, and who 
never give a thought as to who has secured it 
for them and who can see nothing in the British 
Navy but an instrument of tyranny and oppres- 
sion. 

Another matter of very special interest in con- 
nection with this matter, is the fact that the far 
flung British Empire has been built up by a nation 
that has never been dominated by militarism. 
Britain until this last war, has never had a large 
army. It was only when the necessity of match- 
ing the unparalelled military machine of Germany, 
presented itself, that England built up an army 
that was in any degree comparable in numbers in 
a proportionate way with the standing armies of 
half a dozen nations that might be named. England 
has never been in any true sense, a military power. 
She has never had a large army. It has always 
been ridiculously small in point of numbers, — for 
the most part, not much if any beyond a respec- 

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NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

table police force in any large city in America. 
The Irish agitator is fond of calling this police 
force recruited chiefly in Ireland when operating 
in that country, the domination of brutal military 
power. Ireland is no more controlled by mili- 
tarism than any city in the United States is con- 
trolled by militarism because it has an efficient 
police force. So whatever may have been the 
power that built up the British Empire and that 
has maintained and given it force and power, we 
must look for it elsewhere than in the mailed fist 
and shining sword. 

The year 1920 has been a great year in the his- 
tory of the English speaking world. The Celebra- 
tion of the coming of the Pilgrims to these shores 
300 years ago is an event of most unusual moment. 
The English people are as interested in the oc- 
casion as we are ourselves, and the opportunity 
it affords for drawing the very best elements of 
both nations together in mutual good will and 
confidence, is unique. The Pilgrims were the out- 
standing pioneers in democracy both in church 
and state and as such embodied the ideals, that 
for three centuries have been the most potent 
and uplifting influence in the life of both peoples. 
To understand aright this fact, is to find a com- 
mon interest and a common bond of unity, that 
should do something in the way of sending the 
apostle of hate to hide himself away from contact 
with decent men. The fact that these pioneer 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

Pilgrims for conscience and freedom's sake, for- 
sook England is apt to blind us to the greater fact 
that they themselves, with their love of liberty 
and the forward-looking spirit, were an English 
product. True they sojourned for a time in 
Holland, but they themselves were aware that if 
they remained there, they ran the risk of losing 
their precious heritage. It is Longfellow is it not, 
who has written some well-turned lines about the 
sifting of wheat for the planting of a nation? 
There is something of poetic fiction in the phras- 
ing, but like all good fiction, especially if it be 
poetic, it has more of truth in it than the most 
literal prose could have ; for it was out of that seed 
and out of that planting that much that is noblest 
and best in this great Republic of the west, has 
grown. There are two things however, that I think 
we are in danger of forgetting as we dwell upon the 
poet's suggestive lines, indeed the phrasing itself 
may easily conduce to this lapse of memory. The 
first of these considerations is that this wheat for 
the sifting, grew in the soil of England and not in 
that of New England. If we believe in an over- 
ruling Providence at all, and that this Providence 
takes an interest in the affairs of men and nations, 
we can not I think, but feel, that some power and 
wisdom other than human has been presiding over 
the destinies of this nation; and it was no hap- 
hazard chance that determined that the wheat for 
its planting; should be grown in English soil. 
Serious minded men and women find in this con- 

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NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

sideration food for profound and ever widened 
thought. 

A second matter if possible, more deeply sug- 
gestive, and that is more easily overlooked than 
the former, is that not all of the sifted wheat came 
over in the Mayflower nor in the brave ships that 
followed in her wake. A few bushels of that self- 
same wheat remained to be planted in its native 
soil, and to be carefully cultivated from gener- 
ation to generation, even as the kindred seed was 
planted here. It may be too, that trusting to our 
virgin soil and our new and more congenial en- 
vironment, we were the less careful and watchful 
husbandmen. At any rate in more material lines 
of agriculture, we seem to have presumed too 
greatly upon the exhaustless quality of our soil, 
and as a consequence have suffered loss. More- 
over it may be that we were less thoughtful about 
the enemy who sows tares in the field, taking it 
too easily for granted that the planter of evil had 
been left behind, and that our fields were immune 
from his visitations. Possibly we trusted too 
much to the two thousand miles of ocean lying 
between the Old World and the New. Perhaps 
we may be relying over much upon that same 
barrier, now that we have taken to deporting 
some of the sowers of tares in our midst. The 
principle that eternal vigilance is the price of 
Liberty, had its finest phrasing on this side of the 
sea; one wonders however if we haven't failed 
somewhat in the practice of that vigilance as 

[1571 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

contrasted with our kinsfolk on the other side. Too 
often and too much it would seem, would it not, we 
have regarded democracy as something that could 
be handed out ready made, and when properly 
labeled, the only thing we had to do was to sit down 
and enjoy it? Boastful of our liberty it may be, 
and self-satisfied we may have become blind to 
the fact that other people less concerned about the 
label, were more successfully attaining the reality 
than we. Too often I fear, this blindness has led 
the more ignorant and narrow minded among us 
to throw stones at folk at whose feet they might 
well sit to take lessons in democracy. Be all this 
as it may, the two outstanding facts that I have 
mentioned, — the soil in which the wheat grew 
in the first place, and our neglect or inability to 
corner more than a fraction of even the sifted 
portion, — recognized and accepted, ought to lead 
us to join hands in mutual confidence and regard, 
and in grateful appreciation of our common origin 
and our common destiny. 

There is one characteristic of the Britisher that 
can not be fairly denied him. He is a good sport. 
Perhaps there is no man in the world that quite 
comes up to him in this regard. He plays the 
game on the level, and he is almost if not alto- 
gether a better loser than winner. He likes to 
win the prize, but his interest is first of all in the 
game for its own sake. Some of us lose interest 
and are disposed to drop out when the prize eludes 
our grasp, but John goes on playing. This spirit 



NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

of good sportsmanship is seen in the good natured 
way in which John Bull takes the criticisms and 
unkind things that are said about him. Lots of 
people would like him better if they could succeed 
in making him mad more easily. He gets more 
knocks than almost any other human, but for the 
most part he only smiles and goes on with his 
job. 

If one tenth of the vituperative slurring and 
nagging that has gone out from Washington 
toward England, during the last year or two, had 
been directed from the floor of the House of Com- 
mons at Westminster towards this country, it is 
safe to say that before this, more than one reso- 
lution would have been presented in Congress 
asking why diplomatic relations between America 
and Great Britain should not be severed. John 
Bull has a good deal of common sense in these 
matters. He knows we are not all boors. 

One wonders sometimes if the policy of Free 
Trade has anything to do with this good sports- 
manship of the Englishman. Free Trade is always 
Fair Trade. Of course no country is absolutely 
a Free Trade country, just as no country is so 
fully and absolutely under a Protective Tariff as 
to be entirely prohibitive and so to shut out all 
competition. However Great Britain on the one 
hand and America on the other, may be taken 
as representative of the two opposite policies. I 
think it is neither greatly to its credit nor greatly 
to the blame of either country that the particular 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

tariff policy associated with its name has been 
adopted as its own. England, a manufacturing 
country with a limited supply of food stuffs and 
raw material, naturally became a Free Trade 
country. The United States with an unlimited 
supply of food and raw material of all kinds, and 
with manufacturing industries to be encouraged 
and built up, just as naturally gravitated towards 
a Protective policy, but these facts would not 
prevent in any way the bearing of either policy 
upon the general thought and life of the people. 
In a generation or two this or that policy might 
have a most profound influence in this direction. 
Indeed I have often wished that some capable 
metaphysician would write a treatise bearing on 
the psychological and ethical effects of tariffs on 
individual and national character. To speak 
bluntly and not with any pretence at philosophic 
penetration, but I think in a measure truly, when 
we have stripped a Protective Tariff of all its fine 
phraseology, it has the effect and is designed to 
have the effect of putting the buyer at the mercy 
of the seller. Today as the buyer, I submit and 
approve because tomorrow I expect to have you 
in a corner when I have something to sell. When 
the round of exchange has been effected even if 
the balance swings fair and clear between us, we 
have both had a lesson as to how best to deal with 
a man when he can 't help himself, and it is doubt- 
ful if either of us has learned that it is the con- 
sumer that pays the duty in the long run. 

[i6o] 



NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

All this may or may not inculcate and cultivate 
a spirit of distrust and suspicion, but it does seem 
to have a tendency to fix the idea that if a man is 
truly to succeed he must first of all learn how to 
corner the market before he proceeds to market 
his corn. We are told that a high tariff protects 
the American workman and makes him the best 
paid of his class in all the world. That may be 
true but it does not seem to have equal success in 
protecting him in the expenditure of the wage he 
has earned. He is learning that a pauper wage 
is not always a small wage, but a wage that has 
small purchasing power. He is learning or has 
learned that the distance between his own gate- 
way and the Poor House door, is not measured in 
terms of income but in measurements of out-go; 
and that a fiscal policy that shows him how to keep 
from burning his candle at both ends by cutting it 
in two and burning one end of each part, may not 
be altogether a wise solution of the difficulty, for 
there may be some waste in the cutting. When it 
is a neck and neck race between wages and prices 
to see which can soar the highest, the contest may 
be exhilarating, but normal blood pressure and 
heart action are not easily maintained in high 
altitudes, as you very well know. 

Some years ago a phrase the spell-binders used 
to conjure with was, — **The Full Dinner Pail." 
This to be sure, is a weighty desideratum whether 
we eat our dinner out of a pail or off the bottom 
of a tub in the back kitchen, and is well calculated 

[i6i] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

to land the votes on election day, but I noticed 
that our enthusiasm reached its highest level, and 
our hats went farthest into the air when our pail 
was skillfully set side by side with the empty or 
only half filled pail of some workman across the 
sea. It was not our full and heaped up pail, but 
the empty pail of the other fellow, — empty be- 
cause ours was full, — that clinched the argument 
in favor of a protective tariff. Of course we were 
told and we tried to believe, that when the full 
pail was on our side of the sea and the empty one 
on the other, the thing was not only all right but 
superlatively virtuous and patriotic, and I suppose 
it was. But some old fashioned folk among us, 
even in those days wondered if the most far seeing 
statesmanship would be able always to keep the 
two pails the breadth of the ocean apart. We 
wondered if the pack having once acquired the 
habit of worrying the neighbor's flock, would 
pause very long to examine ear marks or to con- 
sider on which side of the fence the quarry was 
found. It may be my son, that the ethics of 
tariffs is a problem of deeper and more far reach- 
ing moment than some people think. Appetites 
grow by what they feed upon, and when abnor- 
mally developed, they sometimes become rapacious 
and insatiable. As a consequence men lose their 
sense of perspective and their ability to see life 
as a whole, and when their purposes are thwarted 
in any way, or when the top-heavy structure they 
have erected, topples over of its own weight, they 

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NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

easily become impatient and irritable, and some- 
times hard to get along with. 

How much I wonder, has all this had to do 
with the bad temper and bad manners displayed 
by some of our Senators, during the debate over 
the Peace Treaty? The juvenile spirit, accustomed 
to give little consideration to others, that exag- 
gerates its own importance and its own achieve- 
ments, and insists on having its own way in every- 
thing, does not readily get the habit of taking a 
world view of things. 

I notice that some of our Solons at "Washington, 
have become greatly distressed over the Uniform 
General Pershing is wearing. It would seem that 
in a moment of weakness, he has yielded to British 
influence to the extent of getting himself a pair 
of riding breeches of an English pattern, and 
worse than that has had a slit of two or three 
inches made in the tail of his military tunic. These 
departures from democratic simplicity, and the 
subserviency to Imperialistic British custom which 
it entails, is hardly to be tolerated in the Com- 
mander in Chief of our Armies. Yet they do say 
that some of these defenders of the Constitution, 
wear silk hats and cotton socks, and it is reported 
that a few of them wear suspenders. Such is the 
inconsistency of human nature ! Human nature 
or no human nature, how galling it must be for 
these men to have to use the English language in 
which to uphold the Constitution and the Inde- 
pendence of the United States of America, 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

especially against the encroachments of Imperial 
Britain. 

How perfectly splendid it would be, as the 
young ladies would say, and how interesting and 
instructive, if the extremest among our represen- 
tatives at Washington, could carry their point to 
its consistent and logical culmination, and so 
thoroughly Americanize the Halls of Congress, in 
both speech and dress, as to eliminate the least 
possible suggestion of European and especially 
of English influence. If this could be done, if 
only for a period of ten years, it would teach the 
world a lesson in democratic simplicity and dig- 
nity that the world would not be very likely to 
forget. 

Let the Constitution be amended if need be, in 
order to provide that no debate nor set speeches 
be permitted in any language except Choctaw, 
and that during the sitting of Congress, members 
of both houses on pain of expulsion, shall wear 
nothing but buck-skin breeches and moccasins and 
a woolen blanket each. Let it be understood that 
blankets of Congressmen be bordered in red and 
those of senators in blue. This done I feel sure 
that European and English influence would be 
reduced to a minimum, and in stately dignity and 
commanding simplicity, our Reichstag would be- 
come an object lesson to the world. 



[164] 



CHAPTER XIV 

Militarism 

ERHAPS an interrogation point will be 
placed after my remark about the non- 
military character of the British Empire ! 
To be sure, beside the small army England has 
maintained through the centuries, is to be placed 
the mighty navy which has been her boast and 
her defence. It is true that since the great Armada 
of Philip, England has possessed to a greater or 
less extent, a predominating sea power, and the 
question may be put forward as to whether or no 
this navy has taken the place of an army in con- 
stituting the Empire a military nation. This 
would seem to be the thought entertained by our 
pacifist friends at the beginning of the European 
war. Horrified at the outbreak of hostilities, as 
we all were, these people seemed unable to dis- 
criminate, and so placed every nation that had 
been drawn into the conflict, upon the same foot- 
ing and in the same category. To them war was 
war and fighting was fighting, and the man who 
wards off a blow is as guilty and as much to be 
censured, as the man who strikes the blow. Hence 
it happened that with sapient ingenuity a new 
word was coined and pressed into circulation. This 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

new word was, — ' * Navalism, ' ' and its use seemed 
to give the pacifist orator courage in attacking 
the Militarism of the Central Powers. Just why 
learned Divines and Professors and Principals of 
Colleges and Seminaries, took comfort in the use 
of this term in their arguments on behalf of the 
pacifist position, it is difficult to determine; but 
it is assuredly certain that militarism met with 
its hardest knocks at their hands, when Navalism 
was set up to receive blow for blow. 

Evidently it never dawned upon these men, that 
if the thing had any meaning at all, — to use these 
two words as co-ordinate terms or as standing for 
co-ordinate ideas in the way they did, was to do 
violence to language and the proper use of words. 
If 'navalism' had to be attacked as a menace to 
the world 's peace and tranquillity, why I wonder, 
did it not appeal to somebody as fit and proper, 
to drop the term militarism out of the discussion 
altogether, and substitute another new invention, 
namely the word 'armyism'? Of course this might 
have led to a further sub-division of the general 
term 'militarism' and possibly we might have 
been regaled upon the menace of 'Infantryism' or 
'Cavalryism' or 'Artilleryism', — until at least 
the conviction was borne in upon us that nothing 
in the remotest degree capable of harboring a 
menace, had been left out in the castigation. 

"Navalism" in so far as it was a menace to the 
peace and well-being of the world, could be so 
only in so far as it was an element in Militarism. 

[i66] 



MILITARISM 

The army of Germany dominated and controlled 
the civil government, and that is what constituted 
Militarism. No navy I ever heard or read of, in 
England or anywhere else ever did this thing. 
And what is more, no navy ever has been or ever 
can become a weapon of aggression, but only of 
defence. A navy can support an army as an in- 
strument of aggression and invasion, but can not 
itself over-run territories or menace the indepen- 
dence or freedom of a people, nor can it tyrannize 
over a subject population. It can not in any wise, 
become a substitute for an army as an instrument 
of aggression or conquest, — of invasion or of 
tyranny. It is manifestly true therefore, that the 
nation that has never given itself to building up 
a great and dominating army, can not with any 
reason, be called a military power, no matter how 
big a navy it may have. As a matter of fact, so far 
from being an instrument of aggression or a men- 
ace to any people, the British navy has been the 
ultimate defence of human liberty the world over. 
For two centuries and more, it has maintained the 
freedom of the seas. Pre-eminently a sea-faring, 
commercial people, the British have been com- 
pelled to provide an adequate defence for their 
shipping, but that defence has never been in any 
way a menace to the shipping of any other nation. 
It is only during the period of British naval 
supremacy that this absolute freedom for the 
coming and going of the shipping of any and every 
nation on a complete equality of privilege in times 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

of peace, has been maintained. When Spain was 
a dominating sea power, she drew lines on the 
high seas beyond which no shipping except her 
own, was permitted to go. When Dutch sea power 
was dominant, Holland did the same thing. Never 
at any time has England followed this course in 
times of peace. In war it has always been recog- 
nized as legitimate warfare, for a belligerent na- 
tion to prevent its enemy if possible, from receiv- 
ing material that would be of assistance in 
carrying forward the war, whether conveyed by 
neutral shipping or by the boats of the enemy 
country herself. All nations at war, have claimed 
this as a right and have followed it as a practice 
as far as they have been able. We ourselves have 
always done it. The war with Spain had not been 
declared many hours, when our navy began to 
overhaul neutral shipping bound for Cuba. Ves- 
sels were boarded, their manifests or cargo exam- 
ined, and when necessary they were compelled to 
enter an American Port, there to await the de- 
cision of a prize court: and America was wholly 
within her rights in so doing. But, and this should 
be remembered, it has been the unalterable policy 
of both the American and the British navies, that 
in no case should a neutral vessel be sunk, or the 
lives of non-combatants be put in jeopardy, much 
less sacrificed. 

Of course to Germany and the Sinn Fein outfit 
on both sides of the sea, it was a great grievance 
that the navy of England was at hand not only to 

[i68] 



MILITARISM 

defend her own existence, but also the world's 
liberty and civilization, when a concerted attack 
was made upon them. 

It seems to me that no proposition could be 
more self-evident to reasonable and thinking men, 
than that if this defensive weapon had for any 
reason failed to be on hand, the whole world today 
would be lying prostrate and at the mercy of 
Prussian Militarism. Of course ignorance and 
jealousy and blind spite must be expected to go 
on prating about the freedom of the seas, and 
must continue to berate England in connection 
with the matter, but the great body of clear- 
thinking people among us can not but hope that 
at least until our own navy can be depended on 
to do or help in doing what the British navy has 
been doing for centuries, this same old navy, in 
the interest of world peace and world liberty shall 
not abate its supremacy in any degree. 

Any club is good enough for the Anglophobist to 
use in his senseless and stupid attacks upon Eng- 
land, and any propaganda that appeals to preju- 
dice and ignorance and that by misrepresentation 
and distortion of fact, can embarrass the British 
government in any part of the empire, is sanc- 
tioned and approved. It is indeed a strange phe- 
nomenon that any of our people can be wheedled 
into making fools of themselves and of our coun- 
try in this respect. Conspicuous in this direction is 
the effort of the Anglophobist at the present time 
to make trouble for England in India and 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

Egypt. If we weren't fools we would welcome 
England in India and Egypt, and in Persia too. 
One wonders why it is that when Persia sees it 
to be to her advantage to enter into a special 
agreement with England, certain of our make- 
believe statesmen can not contemplate the ar- 
rangement without getting as red in the face as 
an apoplectic turkey-cock. German intrigue has 
for years sought to stir up fanatical tribesmen 
to rebel against the Persian Government, in the 
hope that the German scheme of world conquest 
would be furthered tliereby, especially if the 
traditional friendship of Persia for Great Britain 
could be impaired. To this end the fanatical 
groups were informed that the German Emperor 
had become a convert to Islam, and this sort of 
propaganda has not ceased with the war. 

It ought to be well known to everybody by this 
time, that one of the elements entering into the 
effort Germany was making to dominate the 
world, was the purpose of the Kaiser and his 
Potsdam gang to set the whole Mohammedan 
world on fire from Morocco to Calcutta. Had this 
part of the Prussian program been successful, it 
is appalling to contemplate what the result would 
have been, and it is a miracle that it did not 
succeed. Calamitous as was the world's war in 
every respect, it is manifestly true that it would 
have been ten-fold more so if this diabolical 
scheme had worked out as intended. It is doubt- 
ful if human civilization could have long survived. 

[170] 



MILITARISM 

Many strange and well-nigh inexplicable happen- 
ings attended the prosecution of this greatest of 
wars, but nothing could well be more marvellous 
than that the rest of the Mohammedan world did 
not follow the lead of Turkey and the Sultan 
when they threw in their lot with Germany. 
Nothing apparently had been left to chance, and 
by every possible principle of calculation, this is 
what should have happened. Why did this plot 
miscarry? It is nothing but common justice and 
fair play to Britain, to say that the chief cause 
of failure, perhaps the only cause, is to be found 
in the just and righteous and liberal government 
she has exercised over the vast Mohammedan 
population within the Empire. These peoples 
freely elected to remain loyal to the government 
that had always treated them fairly and had 
never tyrannized over them, rather than follow 
their co-religionists and the supreme leadership 
and dictatorship of their faith, when these suc- 
cumbed to the blandishments of Berlin. And now 
that this peril is averted for the time being at 
least, we find dense ignorance and vindictive spite 
and prejudice in Washington and elsewhere lend- 
ing itself to undermine and destroy the power to 
which we owe our salvation in this matter. It 
seems intolerable and beyond belief that the 
Kaiser's game should be taken up on this side 
of the A;tlantic. These people are playing with 
fire, in seeking to gratify their unreasoning hate 
and ill-will and remind one of a gruesome story 

[171] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

once read or heard somewhere of a cowboy on 
the plains. He had for some reason or other come 
to have a grouch against the rest of the outfit, 
and he nursed his grievance till it became a 
disease. He determined to have vengeance, and 
watched his chance to stampede the great herd of 
steers when he thought he could do it with safety 
to himself and disaster to his fellow cowboys and 
to the cattle and their owners as well. He made 
the attempt but something went wrong with his 
plan and he himself was caught in the wild mad 
rush of the herd. After the cyclone of horns and 
hoofs had passed over, the other men sought to 
discover some trace of their comrade but none 
was to be found. The cruel hoofs had trampled 
into nothingness the rider and his mount. This 
is what the Kaiser very nearly brought to pass. 
This is what other paranoiacs are seeking to do. 
If they can succeed in stampeding the Moham- 
medan world, there will be little of our civiliza- 
tion left to tell the tale. 

Another attack upon England more amusing 
but scarcely less reprehensible and dangerous, is 
that represented by the message sent to the Prime 
Minister of Great Britain by four score or so of 
our pseudo-statesmen at Washington. It seems 
reasonably certain that some of these men must 
have been holding their sides when they attached 
their names to this grotesquely unique message, 
for it is hardly conceivable that in a group of 
nearly one hundred there would not be several 

[172] 



MILITARISM 

with some sense of humor in their makeup. 
Among the majority however, judging from the 
spelling of their names, that capacity would be a 
rare commodity. A sense of the ridiculous surely 
would have prevented the quoting of our constitu- 
tion as having any binding force upon an indepen- 
dent and sovereign nation having a constitution of 
its own, even if unwritten, and especially when that 
other nation has been quite as scrupulous in ob- 
serving the principle embodied in the paragraph 
quoted, as we have been ourselves. Indeed one 
would suppose that a sense of humor or some- 
thing else would have restrained these worthy 
gentlemen from calling attention to the fact that 
the grossest violations of the principle that, — 
*'No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or 
property, without due process of law," are to 
be found in the land where the principle is em- 
bodied in the constitution. And besides it is not 
very pleasant to contemplate as this act compels 
us to contemplate, that there is no land civilized 
or uncivilized, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, 
where that violation takes place by the means 
and the process of the stake and fagot, except our 
own. We would do well to wipe that stain off 
our escutcheon before we tell other folk how they 
ought to manage their own affairs. Uncle Sam 
is a very estimable and amiable old gentleman, 
possessed of a good degree of common sense, but 
I fancy he gets at times a bit weary of some of 
these garrulous old women who presume to speak 

['73] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

on his behalf. I don't think he likes to be forced 
into the position of assuming the role of common 
scold among the nations. I feel sure he isn't com- 
fortable when he is pushed upon a holier-than- 
thou perch and with parrot-like prescience and 
precision, made to read moral lectures to the rest 
of mankind. The world laughed a good deal at 
the German for claiming to be the super-man. 
Some of us are concerned, not that we shall be 
laughed at, but that we may give cause for 
laughter if we proceed to climb upon the pedestal 
from which Fritz has fallen. 

It isn't altogether becoming, nor is it I think, 
in accord with the real spirit of America, to ex- 
pect or demand that we should have special con- 
sideration and be exempt from laws and judg- 
ments that in similar circumstances, obtain among 
other people. Perhaps it is due to thoughtless- 
ness, but too often I fear, we treat people who 
come from older countries to dwell among us, 
as if they were heathen altogether. We forget 
too often that they may have something to con- 
tribute to us as well as we to them. We often 
speak of the stranger as caring only for our dol- 
lars, and when he has filled his pockets, he goes 
back to spend the money we have given him, in 
the old homeland. We seem to forget that he has 
left the equivalent in labor, and that macadamized 
roads, bridges and sewer pipes, water mains laid 
and reservoirs built, constitute the permanent 
assets that remain with us as a result of the ex- 

[174] 



MILITARISM 

change. We sometimes pronounce severe judg- 
ments on people who fail to become naturalized 
citizens, especially if they speak our own lan- 
guage; and we are equally severe upon any of 
our own citizens who cross the water and take 
out citizenship papers in some other land. Does 
it ever occur to us I wonder, that it may be a bit 
incongruous to make the self- same act a crime 
on one side of the sea and a virtue on the other? 
The brilliant performance of the Senate at 
Washington, or some of its leaders at least, in 
dealing with the Peace Treaty and League of 
Nations, has I think, sadly misrepresented the 
spirit of Uncle Sam; and these would-be leaders 
have so befogged the issues, and muddled and 
mixed the matter up with other questions, that 
it is quite doubtful if any vote that could ever 
be taken now would be able to register truly the 
real spirit of the nation. Defending themselves 
in their reactionary attitude and their determina- 
tion to defeat and discredit the President, they 
have placed the country in a most unenviable posi- 
tion. Claiming to follow in the footsteps of 
Washington and other founders of the Republic, 
they have manifestly failed to come within teles- 
copic distance of these early leaders in our na- 
tion's life. One would hardly presume to dog- 
matize as to what Washington's attitude would 
have been, had he been living today; but seeing 
that he was fully abreast of the forward-looking 
thought of his own time, it is hard to conceive 

[175] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

that he would feel greatly flattered by these men 
professing to follow his leading when in this day 
and generation, they insist that we as a nation 
ought to live like a colony of owls in a hollow 
tree. 

Fortunately Thomas Jefferson has not left us 
in much doubt as to what his attitude would be as 
related to some of the problems of our day. In 
his old age, the author of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, wrote a letter, almost one hundred 
years ago now, to James Monroe then President, 
in which some signifi.cant words appear. A 
proposition had come from England, regarding 
united action on the part of the two nations with 
reference to the freedom of South American coun- 
tries, — a proposition for an embryo League of 
Nations, — if you will. In his letter to Monroe, 
Jefferson said: — ''Great Britain is the nation 
that can do us the most harm of any one or of all 
on earth; and with her on our side we need not 
fear the whole world. With her then, we should 
the most sedulously nourish a cordial friendship: 
and nothing would tend more to knit our affec- 
tions than to be fighting once more side by side 
in the same cause." 

Nor is it difficult to surmise what the attitude 
of Benjamin Franklin were he alive, would be 
towards the greatest effort in the direction of 
world peace and international good-will that has 
ever been made : for he had sense enough to know 
that no convention or constitution drawn up by 

[176] 



MILITARISM 

man, is ever likely to be perfect, but in all prob- 
ability will call for amendment from time to time. 
Furthermore, Franklin saw it to be not only com- 
mon sense, but practical wisdom to co-operate 
with others and to give consideration to their 
opinions, even if not altogether in accord with 
his own. These were his words at the convention 
which adopted the Constitution of the United 
States: — 

' ' Mr. President, I confess that I do not entirely 
approve this Constitution, but I am not sure that 
I shall never approve it. I have experienced 
many instances of being obliged by better in- 
formation or fuller consideration to change 
opinions even on important subjects which I once 
thought right but found to be otherwise. In these 
sentiments I agree to this Constitution with all 
its faults if they are such. I doubt too whether 
any other convention we can obtain may be able 
to make a better Constitution. The opinions I 
have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public 
good. I can not help expressing a wish that every 
member of this convention who may have object- 
tions to it, would with me on this occasion doubt 
a little his own infallibility, and to make manifest 
our unanimity, put his name to this instrument." 

Franklins seem to be rare at the Capitol these 
days. These enemies, not so much of the Treaty 
and League as of the President have surely placed 
the country in a very unenviable position; for we 
are bracketed with Mexico and one or two like 

[1771 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

nations standing outside the League. Practically 
all the South and Central American Republics 
have become members. I wonder if this fact does 
not press upon us the suggestion and supposition 
that these countries place a larger trust in the 
League of Nations than they do in the Monroe 
Doctrine. If it does, we as represented by the 
Senate majority, have ourselves to blame for it. 
Perhaps these countries know, as some of the rest 
of us do, that the Monroe Doctrine would have 
been knocked into a cocked hat or a cocked sun- 
bonnet long ago, if it had not been for the British 
Navy. 

It is easy to call the League an English League, 
because it then becomes safe to kick it all over 
the lot, and at the same time secure a certain 
cheap popularity for being brave and patriotic in 
doing so; but this is either addle-pated nonsense 
or it is dastardly wicked politics and propaganda. 
As a matter of fact the Treaty and the League 
are no more English than they are French or 
Italian or A^merican. One wonders why the dip- 
lomats at Paris did not discover that England 
had preponderating voting power in the League 
and all the rest of it. Why was it left to certain 
Senators under the tutelage of Sinn Fein to dis- 
cover this notoriously non-existent thing? It 
might as well be called the League of the Man in 
the Moon, and doubtless among other designa- 
tions, this one would have been applied if any of 
our legislators could have been persuaded that 

[178] 



MILITARISM 

any considerable body of voters had a grouch or a 
l^rejudice against the Lunar Potentate. 

It is really interesting and amusing my son, to 
note how far a rampant imagination can carry a 
man sometimes. My Christian Science friend is 
a case in point. He sat upon a carpet tack the 
other day. Of course it was all a mistake, — an 
error of mortal mind. There was no tack there at 
all, but he acted as if there had been, even to the 
extent of using some words quite as unfit to print 
as yours or mine would have been. I think I 
know what you would do if you had an imagina- 
tion and a religion that played tricks on you like 
that. You would sell them for junk to the first 
pedlar that came to the door or you would 
go and buy yourself a pair of leather breeches. 

By tlie way m}^ son, I sometimes wonder why 
you maintain such an uncompromising attitude 
of hostility towards the healing achievements of 
your ' ' Scientific ' ' friends. Do I know any of the 
folk of whom you speak who have taken to per- 
ambulate up and down this bridge that goes 
nowhere. Who are the people who have been cured? 
Whj^ do they call it being cured, when there is 
nothing to be cured, — no toothache because there 
isn't any tooth to ache? Ah me, what felicity! 
No wonder folks get rid of all their pains, when 
there isn't any folks to have pains! What stupids 
we are to carry umbrellas these uncertain days, 
when it rains no more and no less on uncertain 
days than on certain days and that isn't any at 

[179] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

all because there isn't any days to rain on, nor 
folks, nor umbrellas either. How interesting it 
must be to use a non-existent umbrella to keep off 
a non-existent rain from a non-existent $50 hat, 
when there isn't any head to put the hat on and 
no brains in the hatless head! dear I am lost 
in the abstruseness of the obtuse and greatly fear 
I will have a non-existent headache if I don't 
watch out. All the same I can't very well under- 
stand why you, dear doctor, should object to any- 
body or any method that abates in any degree 
the pain of a suffering world. Why should you 
insist that all healing must be done according to 
an orthodox plan? I'm sure you know very well 
that there isn't a disciple of Aesculapius among 
you worth his salt, who hasn't cured many a man 
with bread pills, — two taken at bed time in half 
a teaspoonful of honey. Yes and you say you 
got results in exactly the same way that the Chris- 
tian Scientist does. And that is true but neither 
of you know why or how. You explain in differ- 
ent language of course but you are both sure the 
indisposition was a matter of the imagination and 
when your patient was induced to forget it, the 
sickness vanished. The difficulty was not physi- 
cal and when the mind mastered the situation, a 
normal condition of health was established. The 
change was brought about by the direct action of 
mind upon matter. May I suggest a somewhat 
different explanation in both cases'? This is what 
happened. Your patient, trusting to your pills 

[i8o] 



MILITARISM 

and to luck, lay down and relaxed himself, and 
in that relaxed condition, some pinched and im- 
prisoned nerve managed to kick itself free and by 
so doing set the normal processes of nature in 
motion, and relief was the result. The Christian 
Science patient, listening to the charming prac- 
titioner as she floated in a cloud of sweet and 
mystifying rhetoric, lay down and relaxed him- 
self and the process and the result were exactly 
the same as in the case of your patient. The 
result would have been the same in either case 
had the object of reliance and veneration been 
a stone with a hole through it, a rabbit's 
foot or the shin bone of some medieval saint 
and it would not have detracted in any way 
from the merit and efficacy of the charm if in 
reality the stained bit of bone, as is probable in 
most instances, was nothing more than the shank 
of a sheep, provided the reliance was strong- 
enough to produce the necessary relaxation. But 
wait! Holding your theory, you see approaching 
the Chiropractor, the most scientific workman in 
the whole bilin of you. The rest of you, faith 
and mental healers, with your bread pills and 
your incantations, nudge elbows and say: — ''Now 
watch this fakir! He thinks he gets results and 
if he does, it will be in the same way that we do. ' ' 
Yes it is in the same way but he knows exactly 
why and how he gets them and you don't. He 
runs his deft fingers along your vertebra and dis- 
covers directly the poor pinched and imprisoned 

[i8i] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

nerve that is causing the mischief and without 
waiting for the chance of relaxation to do the 
work, liberates and sets it free to perform its 
normal task. With your persistent conservatism 
you put him in the same category with Alexander 
Dowie and Mary Baker Eddy and Schlatter and 
a miscellaneous host of faith and mental healers, 
when it is you with your bread pills and not he 
at all who belongs in that group of fadists and 
cranks. Of course you do not try to cure typhoid, 
diptheria and smallpox with bread pills but by 
your theory and explanation of the process in 
those exceptional instances where you do resort 
to a sort of camouflage you encourage and send 
out a multitude of healers who profess and pre- 
sume to be able to cure all kinds of maladies by 
all kinds of hocus-pocus methods, — from absent 
treatments to walking three times round a stump 
on a dark night. Moreover you do not like a bit 
the menace to the public health which the condi- 
tion you have contributed in producing, is mak- 
ing more threatening from day to day. 

yes, we are all quacks more or less and at 
convenient times, — only I think the political 
quack is the most notorious quack of all, and his 
cure-all methods make your bread pills look like 
thirty cents. By his absent treatments he can 
make grass grow on a croquet ball, and ice cream 
rain down from the Milky- Way. His rival is 
about to enslave the country and violate the Con- 
stitution, by foisting upon us a ''League of 

[182] 



MILITARISM 

Nations," while he would send us singing down 
the centuries, joyous and free as a member of an 
''Association of Nations." He would have us 
understand that the President should be driven 
from power with all his dynasty, because he de- 
feated the treaty and kept us out of peace, but 
he and his colleagues should receive the eternal 
gratitude of the nation because they blocked the 
game of the President and prevented him from 
forcing the treaty upon an unwilling people. 

When the political quack graduates into a full 
fledged demagogue, he becomes the ''champion 
of the plain people" making his appeal to preju- 
dice and ignorance, and his patent remedies rele- 
gate Mrs. Eddy and Dowie and your bread pills 
to the scrap heap. 



183I 



CHAPTER XV 
A Presidential Election 

WHEN the Presidential Campaign of 1920 
came to an end and the election was 
completed, it seemed as if one could 
hear from ocean to ocean, and from the lakes to 
the gulf, a great sigh of relief; and it could be 
noticed that no inconsiderable portion of the 
American electorate evinced a strong inclination 
to go and take a bath. 

The election had left a bad taste in the mouth, 
and ''Life Savers" were in demand in all the 
apothecary shops and candy stores in the land. 

The lack of enthusiasm and satisfaction over 
the successful issue, was a marked characteristic 
of post election days. With an unprecedented 
majority, the victors seemed almost as glum and 
sour-faced as the defeated party. Multitudes 
who helped to win the election seemed to take 
little pride in the result. They went about with 
the air and demeanor of men who felt that the 
best thing that could be said about the business, 
was, that of two evils, they had chosen the less, 
and the sooner the whole thing was forgotten 
the better it would be for all concerned. There 
is still hope for a nation when the best men in all 

[184] 



A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 

parties, are ashamed of a campaign carried on 
upon the low level that was occupied in the recent 
contest, even perhaps, when the defence or excuse 
put forward is that if success was to be obtained, 
the only way was to do the thing that was done. 
Thoughtful men know demagoguery even when 
they indulge in it ; and they are not very proud of 
it when they give it countenance and feel com- 
pelled to advance excuses for it as a necessary 
evil, when the election is on. What wonder then 
that electors of all shades of political belief 
entered anew the pathways of ordinary life with 
sober faces and with tardy and springless steps ! 

It is doubtful if there ever was a Presidential 
Election, in which such splendidly stupendous 
issues were before the people, and it is painfully 
true that there never was a campaign conducted 
on such a low and sordid plane as this one. It is 
indeed disconcerting to note that the appeal to 
intelligence and high ethical principles, was so 
conspicuously absent throughout the entire cam- 
paign ; and the appeal to prejudice and ignorance, 
to selfishness and the baser instincts of man's 
nature, was worked at high pressure day after 
day. It is surely disconcerting and alarming to 
realize that to befog the issues, to misconstrue 
and misrepresent facts, to pour forth adroit and 
cunning sophistries and insinuations, is the surest 
way of impressing the electorate and winning its 
support. Can it be true that the electorate of this 
great Nation, has descended to that level? Or is 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

it true, which is almost as humiliating, that the 
shrewdest politicians among us, are quite sure 
that it has? Puzzling and unpleasant moreover, 
it surely is to discover that our foremost and most 
prominent statesmen or would-be statesmen, evi- 
dently think that the only element in the electorate 
that is worth going after at all, is the portion 
that occupies that plane, — the tacit admission 
on their part, that in their judgment the hyphen- 
ated vote already controls the situation and must 
be won at any cost if the election is to be secured. 
Glancing over the campaign literature of that 
day, or that part of it which escaped the devour- 
ing flame, we come upon a very admirable speech 
delivered by Mr. Harding from his front porch, 
to a group of pilgrims of foreign birth or parent- 
age. Speaking to these people the candidate 
warned them against the danger of ''hyphenated 
thinking," and intimated that while sitting on the 
Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate and 
listening to the passionate appeals of men of 
foreign birth and extraction, he had, — ' ' forebod- 
ings and a growing sense of apprehension" lest 
the hyphenated vote in America might some day 
come to have the balance of voting power, and so 
dictate our government. The Senator did well 
to have apprehensions. One wonders how many 
of his colleagues had a like foreboding as they 
listened to tirades of unreasoning hatred and of 
grossest falsehood and misrepresentation. The 
foreboding was well grounded, for quite evidently 

[i86] 



A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 

the thing which he feared had already taken place 
and was being manifested in many ways. During 
the campaign, delegations from a friendly nation 
bearing messages of good will and brotherhood to 
our own, could not land upon our shores without 
being subject to insult and abuse from hyphenated 
citizens of our country. The most patriotic of 
our people could not rise to speak in public a 
friendly word concerning a friendly nation with- 
out being howled down by this same group of 
hyphenates. Little children had placed in their 
hands banners which these same people were too 
cowardly to carry themselves, and which bore 
insults directed against the President and against 
our nation as represented by him, as they were 
paraded before the White House door. Thus the 
very children were being taught disrespect and 
disloyalty, and at the same time were being made 
to feel that the way to coerce the government into 
yielding to their demands, was a resort to terror- 
ism and insult. 

The worst of all if worse could be is this, — the 
senator and his colleagues, by listening and so 
giving countenance and encouragement to the tor- 
rent of passionate vituperation poured out before 
them, became one of the chief causes contributing 
to embolden these same hyphenates in doing these 
things, as well as in arrogantly assuming the pres- 
tige and power of dictation which the campaign 
tacitly yet manifestly demonstrated they possess. 

Further on, the same day, we find the candidate 

[187] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

speaking to another group, and in defence of his 
attitude against the League of Nations and its 
proposed Mandates, he declared that France and 
England had withdrawn their troops from 
Armenia in order to force the United States to 
go in. Now this was a wholly unwarranted inf er- 
ance and came near to being a gratuitous insult 
to these two nations. France and England have 
never had any desire nor purpose to force 
America to do anything America does not freely 
choose to do. These countries had burdens to 
carry that compelled their action, irrespective of 
the course that might be pursued by any other 
land. Moreover, although doubtless they were 
not influenced in any way by the knowledge, — 
these countries knew that in all probability, it 
would not be long before a resolution dictated by 
the very people over whom the candidate had 
forebodings, would be introduced in the senate, 
demanding that France and England withdraw 
their troops from Armenia, and so give the 
Armenian people a chance to go on peacefully 
under a government of their own choice. How- 
ever that may be, the statement of the candidate 
was well calculated, if indeed it was not intended 
to awaken resentment and give satisfaction to 
certain hyphenates and make sure of their ap- 
proval and support. 

Here was a spell-binder in support of the Sena- 
tor, who made a canvas of New England and told 
the people that since the Armistice, Persia had 

[i88] 



A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 

become as much a part of the British Empire as 
Canada ; and that if the censorship was lifted we 
would learn that the Persian people were fighting 
and dying for their freedom. The speaker knew 
of course that his first statement was untrue, and 
his second carried with it its own refutation, for 
if the censorship had closed down on the cables 
as he affirms, how did he so confidently know 
what was going on in that ancient land? To be 
sure, the will to think ill imbedded in the man's 
being, probably compelled him to say if not to 
think that both these falsehoods were true, but 
this for the time being at least, was not the chief 
reason for his reckless affirmation. He knew that 
his statement would inflame and poison the minds 
of many voters, especially of the hyphenated 
variety and set them more fiercely against the so 
called "British League of Nations." In fact he 
was saying exactly what his hyphenated mentors 
and dictators wished him to say if he hoped to 
get their vote. 

Turning to the campaign of Mr. Cox, we find 
no relief from the forebodings and apprehensions 
which we share with his opponent. Indeed, our 
fears that the hyphenated vote is already in the 
saddle, — confirmed and strengthened, for Mr. 
Cox while he denounced his opponent and with 
just cause, for crawling before the hyphenated 
vote, fell down himself and fawned before the 
hyphen, that more than any other, is a menace to 
the peace and concord of our people, — the most 

[189] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

dangerous menace to those institutions that up- 
hold and support our freedom and our democ- 
racy. In one of his speeches Mr. Cox charged his 
opponent with being the candidate of the most 
motley array of questionable groups and in- 
fluences that ever stood behind any man seeking 
the Presidency. His charge had justification when 
he affirmed with much heat, that the opposition 
had solicited the support of racial groups by cater- 
ing to and feeding their discontent, and he in^ 
stanced Germans, Italians, Negroes, Greeks and 
Bulgarians as some of the races before which the 
opposing candidate was bowing in order to win 
the election, and yet he at the very moment was 
feeding discontent by making the most reckless 
and ill-considered assertions in the whole cam- 
paign. He bitterly denounced his opponent for 
failing to give any consolation or hope to the op- 
pressed peoples of Egypt and South Africa and 
Ireland. Of course he knew as well as he could 
know anything, that there are no oppressed 
people in Egypt or South Africa, and like a good 
many of us, he ought to have known that there 
has been no oppression in Ireland for a hundred 
years save such as groups of terrorists, — mani- 
festing exactly the same spirit as the mob on our 
own Fifth Ave., on Thanksgiving day 1920, — who 
by murder and assassination, oppress their 
fellow countrymen. He should have known too, 
that these assassins and terrorists are aided and 
abetted by the hyphenated group that he was 

[190] 



A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 

seeking so wildly to win to his support, — aided 
and abetted moreover, by just such demagoguery 
as this of which he himself was guilty. Mr. Cox 
may have thought that this sort of appeal to racial 
hates and prejudices, this coddling of discontent 
and animosity, was going to win him votes and 
he intended that it should, but he may not know 
that it alienated votes as well, for there are 
thousands of Americans, many of them with Irish 
blood flowing in their veins, who are sick and 
tired of dictation by alien organizations like Sinn 
Fein, whose only conception of freedom and lib- 
erty and fair play, is that they shall have all they 
want of them, but that those who disagree with 
them shall not have any. 

With the possible exception of Washington and 
Lincoln, no man in our country, has ever had the 
opportunity that Mr. Cox had. There was ready 
to his hand the greatest issue that was ever 
placed before any nation. If he had held his can- 
vas upon a high and unassailable level and had 
made his appeal solely to intelligence and honor, 
— to conscience and reason and judgment, refus- 
ing to be drawn aside by racial and other side 
issues, he might not — evidently would not have 
won the election, — but he could have secured a 
place in history for all time, as the man who 
smashed reactionary machine politics and hyphen- 
ism in America, and made it a certainty for a 
hundred years at least, that no matter which 
party had the ear of the people none but the 

[191] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

highest type of American could ever be elected 
to the Presidency of the United States. Mr, Cox 
missed his chance when he staked his all upon the 
desperate attempt to coax Sinn Fein to march 
beneath his banner. It was not only a ruinous 
venture but a stupid procedure as well, for while 
he threw himself down utterly before this most 
vicious and dangerous group of hyphenates, he 
might have perceived that it had already been 
captured, or rather had captured the opposition 
party by kindly supplying an issue and a program 
for the campaign. "While the Republican Party 
was wandering in the dark, helpless and well-nigh 
hopeless, in search of an issue and a policy that 
would give some chance to win in the coming elec- 
tion, Paddy Fein stepped forward and supplied 
the lack by discovering that the League of Nations 
was a British Institution. Mr. Cox must have 
been desperate when he threw discretion to the 
winds aiid made his wild dash to fold Paddy in 
his arms, yet his precipitate effort served a use- 
ful purpose. It gave unequivocal testimony that 
the forebodings of his opponent were well- 
founded, for the most ignorant and the most in- 
tolerant of all the hyphenated vote had already 
gained the power to control and dictate, no matter 
which party won the election. 

These considerations lead us to remark an in- 
teresting fact in connection with the Irish ques- 
tion. We are accustomed to say that the late war 
was made in Germany. It is hardly less true to 

[192] 



A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 

say that the Irish Problem was made in America, 
and it is just such Presidential Elections as this 
late one that clinches the argument and estab- 
lishes the fact. It is not exaggeration to affirm 
that the major portion of all the terrorism and 
assassination that has gone forward in Ireland 
during the last two or three years has been due 
to three separate incidents, all of which were 
American in their origin. In the summer of 1919 
three American citizens visited Ireland and went 
up and doAvn the land, inciting the people to 
revolt and insurrection, and giving them all sorts 
of promises of help from America and the 
American Government, if they would break with 
and resist the Government of Great Britain and 
Ireland. Instigated by this vile and vicious ap- 
peal, fanatical Irishmen lay in ambush for their 
countrymen and shot them to death by the score, 
and in this way set up a reign of terrorism in 
which nobody's life or property was safe if he 
dared to make protest or object. The second 
incident was the resolution of sympathy passed 
by the Senate of the United States, with only one 
dissenting voice, at the time the Peace Conference 
was in session in Paris. Emboldened by this 
Sinn-Fein-dictated folly, the campaign of terror- 
ism and assassination by Irishmen against Irish- 
men took new heart and went merrily on. The 
third incident was the message of protest sent 
to Lloyd-George by eighty or more Eepresenta- 
tives at Washington regarding Irish prisoners. 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

Why shouldn't Irishmen go at it afresh and kill 
more Irishmen, when the U. S. Government as 
represented by these Congressmen at least, stands 
ready to see that they are let out of jail, should 
they get in. 

A gentleman from Belfast spoke before a large 
gathering in a New England city in the summer 
of 1920. His address had nothing to do with 
politics, but at the end he was asked by his aud- 
ience to take a little while longer and seek to 
elucidate the Irish Question that was doing so 
much to put a damper on that cordiality that 
should exist between England and America. The 
gentleman consented and it would seem that in a 
few words he put his finger on the crux of the 
whole situation; but he did it so gently and in 
such a gentlemanly way that it is doubtful if any 
great number in the seats before him, caught his 
point. In a word he asked Americans to be kind 
and good to the Irishmen who came over to live 
among them. Why did he put it that way? Be- 
cause as I take it, something happens to many 
Irishmen after they come to this country. *'Agin 
the Government" of course, when he comes here, 
for that is a birth-mark which he can not escape, 
but some indigenous bug seems to bite many a 
Paddy before he has been long in the land. The 
soil in which he has been planted and the atmos- 
phere he breathes, often seems to turn a more or 
less matter-of-course antagonism into a disease. 
The fact seems to dawn upon him that suddenly 

[i94l 



A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 

he has put two thousand miles of ocean between 
himself and danger, and so he never scruples to 
keep his country and countrymen in hot water, 
with the ardent and fanatical hope that some of 
the boiling liquid will spill over and scald the 
shins of John Bull. 

The Irishman's penchant for playing to the 
galleries, as for the employment of terrorism in 
order to accomplish his ends, is well known and 
is thoroughly characteristic. In the Irishwoman 
this thing often becomes wildly hysterical. This 
feminine type of the phenomenon is strangely 
exemplified in Mr. De Valera. One looks in vain 
through all his communications with Lloyd-George 
for a single utterance that might possibly betoken 
statesmanship. Rhetorical fireworks intended for 
the galleries of the world to gaze upon with ad- 
miration and awe, constituted the only product 
of his plethoric quill, until his own people had to 
set him aside in order that something practical 
might be achieved. 

Mr. McSwinney carried this racial character- 
istic to the extreme. Starving himself to death 
was indeed a tragic playing to the galleries, and 
constituted a terrorism well calculated to bring 
even as hard-hearted a personality as John Bull 
to his knees. The great mistake England made 
was to weaken before this species of terrorism, 
when hunger-strikes were first started. To allow 
terrorism to defeat the processes of law is not 
at all to her credit, though perhaps it did 

[195] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

demonstrate that she had a heart. Had she re- 
mained firm at the beginning, poor Terry 
McSwinney would doubtless be alive today. 

The parades to which we are treated in New 
York on St. Patricks Day are forceful exhibitions 
of this same phenomenon, especially in these later 
years when wild and blood-thirsty-looking ban- 
ners have punctuated the processions. These 
banners were intended and well-fitted to strike 
terror into any citizen or government that would 
be craven enough to extend a friendly hand to 
John Bull. By the way, one wonders what would 
happen if the Societies of St. Andrews, St. 
Georges, St. Davids and the like took to parading 
our streets carrying banners the exact counter- 
part of those carried on St. Patrick's Day, save 
that the insults were directed against the Irish- 
man, instead of being directed, as on his banners, 
against multitudes of his fellow-citizens. These 
other Societies meet in a social way, on their 
Saint Days, to listen to speeches, sing songs and 
eat impossible haggis, in glorification of their 
lineage and their several racial stocks. They have 
no desire to offer insult to anybody, but then their 
membership is made up of gentlemen. Are we to 
believe that St. Patrick's Society is made up in 
part at least, of something else? We hate to 
think it, but the evidence is against us. 

It is this same attitude of mind that self-invited, 
is turning so eagerly to safeguard the purity of 
our Americanism, by seeing that our school his- 

[196] 



A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 

tories shall be properly revised, and that a brand 
of patriotism vouched for by it shall be the only 
kind permitted in the education of our youth ; for 
it is true that already teachers in our schools 
have been threatened with vengeance by parents 
for teaching their children English Literature. 
These are the people who have dragged our poli- 
tics in the mire, and now they are reaching out 
to lay their unholy hands on our schools. This 
is a sample of the Irish problem that our poli- 
ticians and especially the late campaign have 
helped to fasten upon our country, no matter what 
may happen across the sea. It is only poetic jus- 
tice that it should be so, for both directly and in- 
directly, we have contributed largely to create 
a problem for our Anglo-Saxon kinsfolk on the 
other side. 

It is too soon to say that the Irish problem is 
settled or is very far on toward settlement on the 
old sod. Until the thraldom of ignorance and 
superstition and fanaticism, has been broken in 
Ireland, this can hardly be. If left to themselves 
with their terrorism and whining and gallery 
playing, kept for home consumption, and only 
their boycotts and the like met by boycotts from 
without, they might come to discover that their 
woes have been of their own making through aU 
the long centuries. 

What a howl went up when their representa- 
tives brought back a Treaty from London, signed 
by themselves and by Lloyd-George and his col- 

[197] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

leagues! ''Ireland has been sold ont," was the 
cry. But if so, by whom, may we ask? Not by 
Lloyd-George certainly ! Not by the British Gov- 
ernment ! Only Irishmen could do that ; and there 
you have it. They can not trust one another and 
how can we expect them to trust other people; 
and how can other people be expected to trust 
them? 

Doctor Samuel Johnson was a puffing old hypo- 
chondriac, but he was the outstanding literary 
genius of his day; and he must have been an 
exceptionally shrewd judge of human nature, for 
he is reported to have said : — 

''The Irish are a very truthful people. They 
never speak well of one-another. " 



[198] 



CHAPTER XVI 

Is THERE A CUBE FOR THE WoRLD's UNREStF 

WHAT is the cure for the world's unrest? 
— the cure for the suspicion and distrust 
that seems so prevalent on every hand? 
Does anybody know? I'm sure I do not. It is 
true, is it not, that there is more bitterness and 
hard feeling and gross selfishness abroad among 
the nations, than has existed at any time since the 
beginning of the European war? Cordiality and 
good feeling and co-operation seem to have given 
place to misunderstanding, suspicion and recrim- 
ination. The era of brotherhood and good-will 
for which men looked as a result of a common 
peril and a common spirit of sacrifice in beating 
back that peril, seems to be farther off than ever. 
. At a time when all thoughtful men, especially men 
in public position, ought to have been bending 
their energies and efforts in the direction of con- 
ciliation, mutual understanding and co-operation, 
there has been a strangely perverse and wicked 
disposition to create ill-feeling and estrangement, 
and it is not at all pleasant to be compelled to feel 
that in our own country this spirit has found 
such free and ill-advised expression. Old grudges 
and prejudices and misconceptions have been 

[i99l 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

given a new lease of life. A well-nigh unpardon- 
able ignorance of other nations and of the spirit 
that prompts and controls their policies, have led 
to an imputation of motives and designs that have 
been wholly unwarranted and unjust. Politicians 
destitute of any issue to carry before the voters, 
have sought to supply the lack by dragging into 
the mire of petty party contentions, great Inter- 
national problems in which the peace and welfare 
of the whole world is concerned. By unwarranted 
and malicious and false accusations of other 
peoples and nations, men have sought to win ap- 
plause and popularity, as well as to advance their 
own and their party's political ambitions and 
ends. If the world is in a turmoil of bitterness 
and suspicion, of distrust and alienation, let it be 
confessed with shame, that America has done her 
full share in producing this condition. Possibly 
such confession would be one of the first steps in 
the direction of bringing about a better state of 
affairs. A more careful and thoughtful study of 
the conditions that led up to the world cataclysm 
which began in 1914, might help us to realize 
something of the peril that lurks in the propa- 
ganda of suspicion and spite that is going forward 
in our midst today. 

The German Hymn of Hate was but the free 
and natural outcome of the policy that had been 
carried on in that country for years, in prepara- 
tion for the contemplated and intended attack 
upon the world's liberties, which was sooner or 

[200] 



IS THERE A CURB FOR THE WORLD'S UNREST? 

later to be made. This in and by itself, did much 
to make the world war inevitable. A senseless 
and unreasoning hate against France was incul- 
cated from generation to generation. A still more 
senseless and stupid hatred of England was taught 
German children from their earliest years, and 
they knew not why they hated, save that by false- 
hood and misrepresentation they were made to 
feel that England was seeking to work harm to 
their country. If upon a similar basis of misrep- 
resentation and falsehood, hyphenated Americans, 
in churches and schools up and down the land, 
are teaching hatred of England, is it not time that 
America sat up and began to take notice ? Does it 
not seem intolerable that these hyphenated citi- 
zens should set themselves to force our country 
into the position of becoming the heir and imitator 
of Germany in this matter ? Why thould these peo- 
ple be permitted to fasten upon us their hates and 
their prejudices, — their utterly irrational and stu- 
pid malice and spite ? It is surely intolerable that 
this sort of thing should be inculcated against the 
nation between which and our own, there ought 
to exist the closest and most intimate bonds of 
unity and good fellowship. It is little short of 
criminal that children, soon to become American 
citizens, should be taught from infancy to hate 
and even despise the nation and the flag which, 
next to our own should be honored and loved by 
all our people; and yet many of our public men 
because of ignorance or to further their selfish 

[20I] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

ends, take up the cry of an 'oppressed Ireland' 
when as a matter of fact, as we have said, there has 
been no oppression in Ireland for a hundred years, 
save the oppression that one Irishman exercises 
over another. The results of the teaching of hate 
are patent enough in Ireland to anybody who will 
take the trouble to think. It always works itself 
out in tyranny and oppression, assault and 
assassination by one Irishman against another. 
A certain class of Irish always hate England but 
they don't shoot Englishmen nor Scotchmen nor 
Welshmen, in the first instance — they shoot 
Irishmen, and every word of sympathy spoken 
and every dollar contributed to the so-called 
cause of Irish freedom, sends a certain fanatical 
type of Irishman with criminal tendencies, 
out to terrorize and to shoot his own fellow 
countrjnnen. This is bad enough but the main 
thing to consider is that this propaganda will not 
go on and be sympathized with for many years, 
before not only Irishmen will be shooting Irish- 
men on Irish soil, but there will be periodic bursts 
of terrorism in this country when American citi- 
zens, hyphenated at least, will be shooting 
American citizens on American soil. 

It seems strange that so many of our people 
can be fooled by glib agitators of Sinn Fein pro- 
clivities, who got hold of a few catch words, like 
'Liberty' and 'Freedom', — 'Democracy' and 'Re- 
public' and with insistent and strident clamor, 
ring the changes upon them, in a spirit peculiar to 

[202] 



IS THERE A CURE FOR THE WORLD'S UNREST? 

themselves, until the whole atmosphere is as 
freighted and fetid as a barnyard puddle. These 
terms in the mouths of these people, have no 
such meaning as we attach to them. They have no 
more conception of the significance of these 
words as they lie in our minds, than a child has 
of the purpose of the thorns on a rose tree, or the 
perfume in a clover field. These agitators know 
full well that many of us become an easy mark 
when they dilate upon the principle that gov- 
ernments derive their powers from the consent 
of the governed. We seem to forget that men of 
lawless instincts never consent to be governed in 
any land, and further we fail to realize that to 
admit that the problem of Ireland is in the 
slightest degree like the problem of our colonial 
ancestors, is to belittle and render ridiculous that 
great enterprise, and constitutes a grave insult 
to the patriots of the Revolution. When we know 
as we ought to know that these same Sinn Fein 
people were hand in glove with the Potsdam gang 
in their assault upon the world's liberty, it should 
not be difficult to realize that every word of sym- 
pathy and encouragement we give them is a direct 
contribution to the World's turmoil and unrest 
and a direct menace to the future peace and se- 
curity of the world and of democratic civilization. 
When the European war broke out, men said 
that Christianity had failed, and without any 
doubt it had, if Christianity is the thing that a 
great many people apparently take it to be. If 

[203] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

it is an external thing of forms and ceremonies 
exalted to the position of essentials until they 
usurp the place of realities, then it assuredly 
failed. But Ecclesiasticism is not only, not 
Christianity, but is very far oftimes from being 
so, and it needs but little argument to force upon 
a thoughtful mind the conviction that Ecclesiasti- 
cism fell down grievously, — was weighed in the 
balance and found wanting, — when the horrors 
of war fell upon an unsuspecting world. There is 
every evidence too, that Ecclesiasticism is seek- 
ing feverishly to rehabilitate itself and win back 
some of the prestige and power which it once 
possessed. This of course is natural in the case 
of people who identify Ecclesiasticism with 
Christianity, but I miss my guess if this thing 
is ever to be trusted in the future as it has been 
in the past. Rituals no matter how beautiful, and 
dogmas, no matter how well articulated, recited 
and assented to, make poor substitutes for spirit 
and life and character, and that apparently is 
what they ever seek to become. Christianity is 
spirit and life and eventuates in character or it 
is nothing. The world had a superabundance of 
religion of mere literalism before the war, but it 
was powerless to prevent the war, and it is equally 
helpless and hopeless as a remedy for the distress 
into which the world has come since the war. 

We hear many suggestions as to what the world 
needs and is waiting for in this crisis. Doubtless 
there is more or less truth in most of these sug- 

[204] 



IS THERE A CURE FOR THE WORLD'S UNREST? 

gestions, but if we could light upon the one thing 
out of which all other desirable things would nat- 
urally spring, we would be getting closer to the 
solution of our problem, would we not? We are 
told that the world needs a great moral upheaval, 
— a moral awakening. This is a proposition I 
imagine, that few people will take time to deny. 
But in what direction can such a movement pro- 
ceed, and what is the planting and the soil out of 
which it must grow? Take the great moral prin- 
ciple of brotherhood, a term and an ideal much 
in the mind and on the lips of thoughtful men 
everywhere today. Why can not we have a human 
brotherhood, — a world brotherhood? Ah yes, 
why not? But brotherhood presupposes father- 
hood, does it not? Brotherhood apart from and 
independent of the prior principle of fatherhood 
is surely a contradiction in terms, and yet what 
multitudes of men and women are believers in 
and advocates of brotherhood, who ignore and 
refuse to admit the claims of fatherhood, and so 
fail to recognize that such a brotherhood is a 
plant without a root and sooner or later must 
wither and fade. Is not this principle of father- 
hood however, that binds together and upholds 
brotherhood, a religious principle? Does this 
then, not suggest that a vital and essential rela- 
tionship exists between morality and religion? 
Indeed we do not need to travel far in order to 
discover that a morality that is not imbedded in 
religion lacks vital force and c^n not endure, and 

[205] 



IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

a religion that does not eventuate in morality, is 
a mere form without reality or life. Manifestly, 
if these principles are not true, our problem is 
hopeless of solution. The greatest and purest 
moral code in existence is the decalogue, and it 
has never been abrogated in any of its parts ; but 
the code receives its ultimate sanction and war- 
rant from the lawgiver. A close and careful study 
of the code however, discovers the law-giver to 
be not a judge but a father, for every precept is 
shot through and through with that consideration 
and love, and regard for the fundamental neces- 
sities and requirements of man's nature such as 
only a father could disclose, and the only con- 
trolling force that fastens these precepts on the 
minds and consciences of men is the binding 
principle of love. 

Take by way of example, the precept that en- 
joins the observance of a sacred day, — a day of 
rest and worship, — one in seven. This is one 
of the most marvelously thoughtful and beneficent 
provisions that ever came in contact with human 
life. Wherever it came from, — if there is a more 
thoughtful and tender, a kinder and more fatherly 
provision anywhere in the universe, I know not 
where to look for it. Men have thought this pre- 
cept the most restrictive and arbitrary as well as 
the most unneccessary of all the code, but that 
is because they did not take the trouble to under- 
stand it. Over and over again it has been demon- 
strated that man's physical, not to say anything 

[206j 



IS THERE A CURE FOR THE WORLD'S UNREST? 

about his mental and moral being, requires and 
demands the recognition and observance of this 
precept. It is designed to meet and provide for 
a pre-existent requirement of man's nature; and 
it has been demonstrated moreover, that this in- 
stitution can be preserved and saved for the bene- 
fit and well-being of the human race only when it 
is kept up to the ideal of a sacred and holy day. 
yes, I know that every day is sacred and every 
task is a holy task, but let this day of rest cease 
to be a holy day and become a holiday, and it is 
sooner or later lost, even for the most material 
use for which it is designed, — a time for physical 
rest; and it is assuredly true that if man is to 
save himself from becoming a machine, a mere 
bundle of material force, he must have stated and 
regular times when the grip of the material is 
unfastened from his soul. When men lose sight 
of the provision and purpose of the Divine Father 
on behalf of his human children and claim the 
liberty to use the day for the gratification of their 
own pleasure and inclination irrespective of the 
claims of other folk, — which of course must be 
a matter of their own choice, — they are doing 
what in them lies, to rob themselves and their 
fellows of the benefits of a great and benevolent 
institution, and to fasten upon men the shackles 
of economic slavery. Sweat shop conditions seven 
days in the week the year round, for multitudes 
of men and women and even little children, is 
the result, because of the crass selfishness of other 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

men, whose brotherhood has fallen down, and 
that because they recognized no fatherhood back 
of it to hold it true. But this fruitage is not the 
only one. When Germany fell from her high es- 
tate by plunging the world into a brutal and atro- 
cious war, men said a great people had lost its 
soul, and the characterization fittingly expressed 
an appalling truth ; but how did Germany lose her 
soul? In the fourth precept of the decalogue the 
Divine Father set up an institution designed and 
adapted to be one of the greatest agencies for the 
development and cultivation of soul, and it is a 
notorious fact that Germany more than any other 
country perhaps, degraded that institution into 
a means and an opportunity for the grossest 
material gratification and satisfaction. More than 
in any other way, this is how Germany lost her 
soul. Brotherhood gave way to brute violence 
because soul had died the death, and this because 
the Father 's council and purpose of love had been 
trampled under foot. 

But my son, brotherhood can not be forced. It 
is not a thing to be manufactured or coerced. It 
is a principle and a life and it can be developed 
and made potent only in accord with the laws and 
processes of all life. One of the great difficulties 
in the realm of morals and religion is due to the 
fact that so many people, while they may be loaded 
down with religion, have really no religion of their 
own. A religion belonging to somebody else, has 
been forced or fastened upon them like numbers 

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IS THERE A CURE FOR THE WORLD'S UNREST? 

on the backs of sprinters about to run a race; 
but it has established no vital relationship with 
their own mind and spirit. We have heard a great 
deal in recent years about the dogma embodied 
in the affirmation: — ''Might makes Right;" and 
when the picture presented is that of brute force 
seeking to attain its ends and to establish its 
claim, we revolt against the hideous moral per- 
version. But I sometimes wonder if we realize 
that there are other forms of coercion and com- 
pulsion which leave no place for individual judg- 
ment and decision, and so are just as subversive 
of what is true and right. Indeed is it not true 
that the might of material force imposing its 
dictum, is one of the least dangerous of the multi- 
tude of forms in which might presumes and as- 
sumes that it is right; for whenever or in what- 
ever way, individual judgment or will is over- 
ridden or coerced and its exercise rendered 
inoperative or unnecessary, right has become 
subordinate to and dependent on might. The 
Might of organization, — the might of arbitrary 
majorities, — the might and clamor and terroriza- 
tion of minorities, persisted in until because of 
vexatious weariness, it is yielded to in order to 
be gotten rid of, — the might of social position, 
— even the might of magnetic and forceful per- 
sonality, — any or all of these or similar com- 
pulsions, may become the might that claims or 
demands that it be recognized as right. And, 
while a temporary and even desirable end may 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

by this means be attained, at times, the only real 
and worthy goal to be sought after, is put farther 
away. 

The tyranny of things that are big and the tyr- 
anny of mere acheivementfi are among the most 
vicious of all tyrannies, and are forever placing 
men and nations, communities and religious bodies 
at the mercy of that most vicious and degrading 
dogma embodied in the sentence: — ''Might makes 
right. ' ' 

An ideal rightly acclaimed during the war, 
found expression in the words, — ''Make the 
world safe for democracy," and it took a more 
exalted form when men said, — "Make democracy 
safe for the world. ' ' In this connection, with the 
problem on hand, these considerations become 
intensely significant and interesting, when we rea- 
lize that Ecclesiasticism has always and every- 
where, been subversive of democracy, while 
Christianity has ever been the exponent and the 
embodiment of the truest democracy. The funda- 
mental basis of Christianity and of democracy is 
one and the same thing, namely the worth and 
dignity of personality, — so that no Christianity 
can exist if it isn't democratic, and no democracy 
can long endure if it isn't Christian. Few things 
are more significant in the attitude and teaching 
of the founder of Christianity, than the value 
he attached to personality. It was not the form 
in which it appeared, but the thing itself that he 
valued. Any and all personality he seemed to 

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IS THERE A CURE FOR THE WORLD'S UNREST? 

regard as the most sacred entity in all the Uni- 
verse. He ever honored and exalted it. He 
never invaded nor imposed himself upon it, for 
it is upon this that a real and true religion must 
rest, and it is upon this that a genuine democracy 
must stand. To this end, he abrogated and set 
aside once for all and most emphatically, all 
priestcraft. From his day and forward, every 
man had the right and was called upon to be his 
o^vn priest. I do not speak alone of the priest- 
craft clad in the habiliments of priestcraft. On 
every hand there are men who are ever ready to 
assume the prerogative of becoming conscience 
and will for other men, and this is the essence 
of priestcraft, ordained or unordained. The 
Almighty Himself never presumes to do this 
thing. This is the most fundamental principle in 
human existence and in all our civilization, for 
democracy can not exist where priestcraft pre- 
vails. 

Wise men are saying that the greatest need of 
our time is the prophet, — the leader with vision, 
and I think they are right, for there is a manifest 
dearth of prophetic leadership abroad in the earth. 
The leadership of the priest is easy. The leader- 
ship of the prophet is hard, but it is the latter 
leadership for which the world is hungry. These 
two types of leadership have been in conflict since 
the dawn of civilization. The world has rewarded 
its priests, but it has slain its prophets. The 
priest has relieved the world of responsibility. 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

The prophet has placed responsibility squarely 
on the World's shoulders. The role of the prophet 
has never been an easy one, and it is no easier 
today than it has ever been. Indeed the world of 
our day has more subtle and refined methods and 
processes of cruelty, wherewith to attack and slay 
her prophets, than to saw them asunder or spike 
them to a cross. I suppose this is true in all the 
more lowly walks of life, yet one can not but 
wonder why it is not possible to elevate a man of 
vision to the highest place in the gift of the 
people, without having vultures that feed on car- 
rion, pounce upon him and tear his heart out. 
Nevertheless it is the Prophet for which the 
world is crying out, and the prophet must step 
forward if it means to martyrdom at the hands 
of the world that is calling for him, if that world 
is to be saved. 

It may surprise you my son, but I have taken 
to reading some of the religious or church papers 
of the time, and I find that in one form or another, 
there is one complaint running through them all. 
They bemoan the lack of leadership and the deter- 
ioration of the quality of leadership they get. 
For example one of them expatiates upon its 
claim that the system for which it stands, has pro- 
duced splendid managers, magnificent manipula- 
tors, captains that compare favorably with the 
captains of finance and industry in the world of 
business, but they have no great preachers nor 
teachers. I take it this is onlv another way in 

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IS THERE A CURE FOR THE WORLD'S UNREST? 

which the unconscious cry is going up for the man 
who is a prophet. But after all is it not true that 
the Church is getting just what it has chiefly 
sought after. Its rewards are not for the prophet. 
The line of preferment and advance, — the line 
of least resistance is typified by the priest and 
not by the prophet. You say, can not the priest 
be a prophet? It is hardly likely. He may in- 
deed be a profiteer but seldom, if ever, a prophet. 
The two types of leadership are antagonistic. The 
priest cares little for reform. He is afraid of it. 
Advance, development, evolution he shies at. He 
is the only and original stand-patter. When he 
ventures forward he moves along certain ortho- 
dox lines, or he seeks the shortest cut to the goal, 
contradictory though it may seem. The methods 
and processes indeed, he makes subservient to the 
ends sought, and that because he seldom con- 
siders the morality or the righteousness of the 
road travelled, but only the desirableness of the 
end to be sought after. The prophet can wait. 
He can even refuse to attain the most desirable 
end if he has to pass along a crooked pathway in 
order to reach it. He knows that processes do 
more to develop manhood and shape democracy 
than victories at the polling booth. The priest 
lulls men to sleep. He ties bandages and blinkers 
on their eyes and stuffs cotton in their ears. The 
prophet stabs men awake, he tears down the 
blinds and breaks open the shutters in men's 
souls. It is in the prophet's way, and in the 

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IRELAND'S WOES AND BRITAIN'S WILES 

prophet's way only, that the world can be made 
safe for democracy and democracy made safe for 
the world. It is on this line that the demagogue 
and the unscrupulous agitator and disseminator 
of suspicion and distrust, of prejudice and ill- 
will, can be put out of commission. 

If Christianity is to survive it must be demo^ 
cratic. If Democracy is to live it must be Chris- 
tian, and to this end every dogma and every sys- 
tem that makes for class distinction must be 
relegated to the scrap heap, no matter how hoary 
and venerable it may be. 

I have taken to reading the Bible lately, and I 
have been interested to discover that Paul was the 
first great Non-conformist. He broke through 
the impossible and irrational dogma of Apostolic 
Succession. He demonstrated that Apostolic 
Succession is a thing of the spirit and not of the 
letter. He fought the Judaistic system of Priest- 
craft while it was beginning to fasten itself upon 
the Christian Church, until he himself went the 
way of all prophets. That system dies hard, and 
it dies as hard in our day as ever it did, but 
progress is being made. The world war, with all 
its welter of blood and tears, and all its weary 
aftermath of a distrust and suspicion and aliena- 
tion, is but a milestone on the way, for in it all. 
Calvary once more, has been acted out before the 
eyes of men; and the world will not soon forget 
that sublime st moment in all the great struggle 
when on an August night in 1914, a great nation 

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IS THERE A CURE FOR THE WORLD'S UNREST? 

not counting the cost, threw herself and all that 
she had into the breech, and that simply because 
a scrap of paper had been torn apart, and because 
democracy must not be permitted to perish from 
the earth. 

There is hope for the world when a thing like 
that can happen. 

*'It's coming yet for a' that, 
That man to man the world o*er, 
Shall brithers be for a ' that. ' ' 



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